Glyn Moody 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (71) comment rss

  • On the post: A Small Victory For Patent Common Sense: Earth Closet Orders Are No More

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 23 Nov, 2011 @ 06:00am

    Re:

    As I understand it, this is the patent holder conceding that the patent is invalid in the face of prior art (or similar) presented by the alleged infringer during the trial. The trial is therefore halted, and the question is: who pays?

  • On the post: UK Publishers Moan About Content Mining's Possible Problems; Dismiss Other Countries' Actual Experience

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 22 Nov, 2011 @ 01:47am

    Re:

    Thanks - I've clarified this in the text.

  • On the post: Access To Italian Wikipedia Blocked In Protest Of Wiretapping Bill In Italy [Updated]

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 05 Oct, 2011 @ 02:59pm

    Update added

    It looks like the problematic Paragraph 29 has been pulled - see update at end for details.

  • On the post: Microsoft-Samsung Licensing Deal Tells Us Nothing About The Facts, Just About The FUD

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2011 @ 02:43pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    With Samsung and Microsoft, there are lots of ways for the payment by Samsung to Microsoft to be offset by other benefits from Microsoft to Samsung. That could effectively make the overall payments *negative* - which undermines the claim that Samsung needs to pay Microsoft for "problems" with Android. Lacking the details, we can't tell what the deal really means.

    For transparency's sake, I included in my Registry of Interests the fact that Techdirt pays me, and that this is a simple journalistic exchange of words for money. There is no other aspect to the deal.

    Whether I'm paid $1, $10, $100, or $1000 is irrelevant: it's just a question of scale, and a reflection of my ability to negotiate and Mike's willingness to agree. The exact figure makes no difference to the meaning of what I have written.

  • On the post: Microsoft-Samsung Licensing Deal Tells Us Nothing About The Facts, Just About The FUD

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2011 @ 11:29am

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

    See my reply from earlier today....

  • On the post: Microsoft-Samsung Licensing Deal Tells Us Nothing About The Facts, Just About The FUD

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 02 Oct, 2011 @ 01:35am

    Re: Re: Re:

    It's hardly a new model: it's called journalism. People pay me, I write: I've been doing it a long time, as a Google search will show.

    I put up the Registry of Interests to make it clear that any agendas people may perceive are entirely my own.

    As a freelance writer, I pitch stories to editors: if they like them, I write them, they pay. If they don't, I either find someone else, don't write them - or put them up on my main blog. It's as simple as that - there's no formal contract anywhere.

    As for copyright, what's that...?

  • On the post: BSA 2010 Piracy Report: It's Back And It's Just As Wrong As Before

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 13 May, 2011 @ 11:49am

    Re: Let's get the facts right

    If I may, I'll cross-post my reply.

    Thanks for your comments.

    I wrote ?Western-level prices?, not ?Western prices?. The issue here is that the pricing of software in emerging economies is not radically different from that in the West. For example, when Windows 7 was launched in China, the price for the Home Premium edition was RMB699, about $100, whereas the US price was $149.

    And yet the China GDP at purchasing power parity per capita is only $7500 compared to $45,000 for the US (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29_per_capita). This means that the effective price of Windows 7 in China is about $600. Few in the US would be willing to pay such a price.

    You mention enterprise use of software, but the same applies here. Few US companies would be willing or able to pay $600 for every copy of Windows 7 (less, of course, with discounts, but still around this figure), so it's no surprise that Chinese companies don't either.

    If the pricing of products around the world were closer to their Western levels taking these huge disparities into account, pirated copies would undoubtedly prove less attractive, because authorised copies would be both affordable and perceived as fairly priced ? that ?equity? thing.

    They would be more attractive not least because, as your report says, unauthorised copies frequently have security issues through lack of updates etc. So in fact, it could be argued that the widespread use of unauthorised copies is beneficial to the West, since companies in emerging economies must spend far more time dealing with viruses, Blue Screens of Death etc., all of which *lowers* their competitivity.

    Moreover, whatever the ?real? figure for the financial impact of software piracy, it does not harm the local economies in the way the report stated, for the reasons I gave, and may well benefit them.

  • On the post: Glyn Moody's Favorite Techdirt Posts Of The Week

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 23 Apr, 2011 @ 03:23pm

    Re: Nice job

    Thanks - I've already passed this on to Mike, so I'm sure it will be fixed in due course...

  • On the post: Jaron Lanier's Virtual Reality: Secrecy Is Good Because Secrecy Is Necessary

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 24 Dec, 2010 @ 11:33am

    Re: Backup your claims Glynn, please...

    Salon's Glenn Greenwald does a much better job than I can pointing out the kind of thing I mean.

  • On the post: Jaron Lanier's Virtual Reality: Secrecy Is Good Because Secrecy Is Necessary

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 24 Dec, 2010 @ 02:15am

    Re: Backup your claims Glynn, please...

    Well, a small sample that I found in just a few minutes:

    Misinformation about civil unrest in Iraq

    Fabrication of what happened in attack on Yemenis

    Duplicity over major policy decisions

    As for shady deals, pretty much anything to do with ACTA qualifies I think - Spain is a good example.

  • On the post: Now It's The UK's Turn For Some Bogus Piracy Stats

    Glyn Moody ( profile ), 01 Jun, 2009 @ 08:17am

    £10 billion figure even more bogus than it seems

    The report quotes the £10 billion figure, attributing it to an earlier government report. But if you look at that, it turns out to be quoting the media industries themselves, without any further independent justification for that particular figure. Details here:

    http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2009/05/why-copycats-report-has-copycat-problem.html