Jake 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: AT&T Argues That More Competition Is Bad For You & Leads To Higher Prices

    Jake ( profile ), 07 May, 2012 @ 12:03pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Normally...

    Essentially there is a limited amount of spectrum available. It is divided up between carriers. So say there are two carriers in a given area ( not realistic I know) and they each have half of the available spectrum. If carrier A has 60% of the customers in that area, their customers are making due with less spectrum. This could impact speed, call quality etc, especially during peak times.

    For the last few months(years?) all the major carriers have been warning of a "spectrum crunch" where the available spectrum will no longer easily meet need. They are using this "cruch" to justify many things including, throttling 'unlimited' users, the switch to tiered pricing, and the ATT -T-mobile merger.

  • On the post: AT&T Argues That More Competition Is Bad For You & Leads To Higher Prices

    Jake ( profile ), 07 May, 2012 @ 11:35am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Normally...

    But the spectrum is locked down in a given area. A company may have the sole rights to use the 1.8GHz spectrum in a given area and even if they have excess capacity in that area, no one else is legally allowed to use that bandwidth.

  • On the post: AT&T Argues That More Competition Is Bad For You & Leads To Higher Prices

    Jake ( profile ), 07 May, 2012 @ 11:14am

    Re: Re: Normally...

    Agreed, all I am saying is that it is true that it would be more efficient to have all the service providers share the available spectrum, rather then have them each control a portion. One build out, more flexibility etc.

  • On the post: AT&T Argues That More Competition Is Bad For You & Leads To Higher Prices

    Jake ( profile ), 07 May, 2012 @ 11:07am

    Re: Re: Normally...

    I apologize, unlimited was a poor choice of words, maybe shared is a better word, no company has sole unlimited use of I-80 in the US. It is shared for better or for worse by all of them.

  • On the post: AT&T Argues That More Competition Is Bad For You & Leads To Higher Prices

    Jake ( profile ), 07 May, 2012 @ 10:51am

    Normally...

    Normally Mike I agree with you, but in this case your analogy is slightly flawed. There is a finite amount of spectrum available, whereas the roads are essentially an unlimited resource. A more apt comparison would be if UPS and FedEx were required to choose which roads to use and then could not use each others roads.

    This slight variation does give some substance to his claims although I feel that the solution that I would propose would be different. Ideally, it would work where one entity would develop the infrastructure and another would provide the actual service. The problem is that the infrastructure provider would have to be the government, highly regulated, or some sort of non-profit organization, but none of those solutions have a high track record for success. The advantage would be that the spectrum would be utilized in the most efficient way, the result for the consumer would depend on how this was implemented.

  • On the post: Stupidity Of Licensing Demands Means The Wrecking Crew Can't Help Sell More Music With Documentary

    Jake ( profile ), 01 May, 2012 @ 01:58pm

    Re:

    "No clear - would the documentary actually get a wide enough viewership to really mean anything?"

    This point should be moot. If it does get the viewership it is bound to help, and if it doesn't it will not cause any damage to the original work so there would be no harm the the copyright holder. The labels should look at it as a no-lose situation, instead they look at it as a money grab, their problem is that in this case there appears to be no money to grab, so instead of a no-lose situation it becomes a lose/lose situation.

  • On the post: Stupidity Of Licensing Demands Means The Wrecking Crew Can't Help Sell More Music With Documentary

    Jake ( profile ), 01 May, 2012 @ 01:55pm

    I have long been in favor of a loser pays tort system in the US. That would definitely mitigate this sort of thing.

  • On the post: New IP Watchlist Ranks Countries On How Well Their Copyright Laws Serve The Public

    Jake ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2012 @ 07:43am

    Re:

    Your comments assume that the "rule of law" is an universal constant. You are talking about a sovereign nation that makes its own laws, the premise of the comments about Malawi was whether or not that they should enact those laws in the first place. You assume that by having less strict IP laws that it leads to a situation where the "rule of law" is not followed, when in reality if the law does not exist in a country, whether people follow the mythical law or not is irreverent.

    You can argue that there are international laws, but from the state of things today those are really more of suggestions.

  • On the post: Wireless Industry Association Opposes Bill That Would Require Warrant For Them To Turn Data Over To Law Enforcement

    Jake ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2012 @ 12:24pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    The thing is in this day and age getting a warrant should not take that long. All you need is a system where there are several federal judges whose job is to issue these warrants. Cops can electronically file requests to these judges and they can be approved or denied within minutes, making the safety impact minimal at a fairly negligible cost when looking at government budgets. Therefore there should be no need to violate privacy in this situation.

    I pulled out the Franklin quote as an easy way of making this point.

  • On the post: The Chilling Effects Of Copyfraud: Blocking A Researcher From Fair Use… And Scaring Him Into Staying Quiet About It

    Jake ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2012 @ 12:17pm

    Re: Re:

    Another argument for Loser pays (legal bills) on all litigation.

  • On the post: Wireless Industry Association Opposes Bill That Would Require Warrant For Them To Turn Data Over To Law Enforcement

    Jake ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2012 @ 05:28am

    Re:

    The way to judge it is to get a warrant. Does it take time, yes. Can bad things happen, yes. But the US is premised on the notion that it is better to error on the side of freedom. One of the most famous Benjamin Franklin Quotes is:

    "He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither."

    So yes it sucks that bad things CAN happen, but if we allow our freedoms to be slowly chipped away, bad things WILL happen.

  • On the post: The Band's Ex-Manager Accuses Reddit Of Profiting From Piracy In Debate With Co-Founder

    Jake ( profile ), 23 Apr, 2012 @ 09:46am

    Re: Re: Re:

    "they should be making about the same per unit as they were before, and that's the concept"

    That's your logical fallacy, you are applying units to an infinite resource.

  • On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is

    Jake ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2012 @ 06:52am

    Re:

    I can not believe that data caps are necessary.

    It's sort of like this, picture that you have a water pipe running down your street that connects to every house. There is an infinite amount of water running through that pipe. (I know that this is not true in real life) When no one is using it no problem, when everyone uses water at the same time though water pressure drops significantly. Now everyone wants to take a shower at 8AM before work so the water utility is having issues. To solve this they try to limit the amount of water used overall. How does this make sense. I can shower at 3AM for 4 hours and never effect another user, but yet I am treated the same as the user that is showering at 8AM and contributing to the problem. What is even worse is that if the 8AM user is showering quickly, they will never reach the limit and never be penalized even though they are contributing to the problem, while I am being penalized even though I am hurting no one.

    Data caps are the same thing.

  • On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is

    Jake ( profile ), 17 Apr, 2012 @ 06:43am

    Re: Re: Re: Nobody Needs To Know

    No I pay my bill every month for that capacity and I do not mind doing so, I even pay for a higher tier package. But now that I have paid for that capacity, I find it dubious that I am limited in how I use it.

  • On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is

    Jake ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2012 @ 01:05pm

    Re: Re:

    That's the major problem it depends on the resolution that you are watching it in. Higher resolution means more bytes.

  • On the post: The Stupidity Of Data Caps: No One Knows What A Megabyte Is

    Jake ( profile ), 16 Apr, 2012 @ 12:52pm

    Re: Nobody Needs To Know

    No the problem is the caps, they are unnecessary. Data is different than other utilities as it is an infinite commodity. The ISP does not manufacture data, nor does it have to buy and resell data. ISP's have to create bandwidth, but I already pay for a certain amount of bandwidth every month, but now the ISP's want to limit how I use a product that I already pay for with an artificial cap.
    It would be like someone selling you a book and telling you that you can only read it once. Wait, I better stop before I give someone an idea.

  • On the post: Why Do Copyright Industry Profits Get To Be The Yardstick For Civil Liberties?

    Jake ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2012 @ 01:18pm

    Re:

    One of copyright's best features is the ability for artists to be able to retain ownership of their work, while selling or granting for free selected rights to consumers, or to companies, and such. That ability to decide the fate of a work is often much more valuable to an artist than any cash. The money allows them to keep going though, and to do it all again (usually a desirable result).

    You are correct this is a feature (your word not mine) and not a right. If the feature involves trampling on rights it is the feature that should go not the right.

    We've even seen this happen in other industries, when the Path mobile app had a feature that searched and saved user address books, but trampled their right to privacy, path removed the feature. Why should copyright be any different?

  • On the post: Breaking: U.S. Sues Apple, Publishers Over eBook Price-Fixing

    Jake ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2012 @ 08:00am

    Re:

    Yes "Apple's iron grip", they may not set the prices, but by not allowing ebooks to be offered for less elsewhere, they are artificially propping up the prices.

  • On the post: Yes, Copyright's Sole Purpose Is To Benefit The Public

    Jake ( profile ), 10 Apr, 2012 @ 11:01am

    Re:

    If you read the entire article you will notice that both sides of your equation are talked about, but they are given their proper places as the "purpose" of copyright, benefiting the public, and the "method", incentives for the creators. I believe that his point is that by increasing the use of the "method" we are not achieving the "purpose".

    As an example, say you wanted to make roadways a better way to travel by increasing safety while still allowing you to reach your destination in a reasonable amount of time. That would be your purpose. Now you have to choose your method. You could choose to enact speed limits, you could choose to widen roads to decrease congestion, you could choose to make all roads elevated and double layer. Some of these would obviously work better than others. Now, say you choose to enact speed limits as your method. You start with a speed limit of 60 mph, you look and notice that things are working better, there are less accidents, leading to more safety and less congestion. So you take the next step and lower speed limits, but instead of checking to see if that helped, you just assume it did. Again and again you lower the speed limit, assuming it is helping, until finally it is all about the method and not about the purpose.

    So you see, by focusing on the method of copyright, we have lost the purpose.

  • On the post: NYTimes OpEd Explains Why Infringement Isn't Theft

    Jake ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2012 @ 12:06pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    It's what I don't get - every argument comes down to some sort of justification for pirating stuff.


    It's not about justification, it's about reality.

    Say you made your living selling lemonade. It's a good living and you are happy. Then one day, someone comes along and sets up a table next to your stand and gives away lemonade for free. Now you have a couple of choices, you can either make your lemonade better, or you can try to stop the lemonade table from being near your stand. You try the second option, and several times the lemonade table is forcibly shut down by the authorities for hurting your business, or if there is no reason at the time they make up a new reason to shut it down, but every time someone sets up another table. At some point, you have to accept that you need to change because that table is not going away. Whether that table is right or wrong really has no meaning to you at this point. It is there and your efforts to get rid of it have failed. No apply this to the current situation.

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