Bruce Ediger 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (253) comment rss

  • On the post: How One Startup Used Patents To Kill A (Better) Competitor

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 04 May, 2011 @ 01:34pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    "So you're saying that Section 112 of the Patent Act is a myth?"

    This is another example of the legal process failing the citizenry. People ask for reality, people cite reality, people cite experience, and the legal system gives them jargon and paperwork.

    Section 112 of the Patent Act exists, if you say so. But it exists in the same sense that I have a book at home where section 112 says that the sun rises in the West, and sets in the North every morning.

    You can write any amount of counter-factual laws. That doesn't make the content of the laws truthful.

  • On the post: We've Trained The TSA To Search For Liquid Instead Of Bombs

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2011 @ 01:21pm

    Re: Re: I've Got That Beat

    You probably make a correct observation, but...

    It seems an awful lot like the special pleading fallacy (http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/special-pleading.html).

  • On the post: Is It Rude To Link To Someone Without First Asking Permission?

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2011 @ 11:07am

    Re: Bustin' That FUD!

    Well, copyright per se could clearly be used to prevent free speech, prevent transfer of information, prevent a large number of activities that we (society in general) find advantageous, or worthwhile. Ya with me so far?

    So our representative government put in "escape valves", like fair use, where anyone taking small excerpts (or maybe even entire reprints) for criticism, education or other uses doesn't have to ask permission. Fair use exists to prevent bad things from arising from copyright, as they arose from earlier instantions, like the Statute of Anne.

    Here comes the hard part: a hypertext link isn't even an excerpt of an electronic document. It's more like the street address of a library and a card catalog number, so that a human can find a particular book. So you can't really infringe upon "intellectual property" by linking to something. Just as it's not rude in real life to give someone directions to an address, it's not rude on the internet to link to something. The HTML containing the link doesn't even really *do* anything, it's all in the browser, and the browser's user clicking on the link.

    Now, that's a lot of material to comprehend, especially for a beginner, so be sure to post follow-up questions here.

  • On the post: More Video Game Makers Fear The Free Market And Don't Know How To Compete

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2011 @ 10:49am

    Re: Re: Re: Ferrari vs Hyundai, cost to build

    You really do exhibit cowardice, "Anonymous Coward". You just insult people, and do not educate, even upon sincere request.

    Also, you exhibit prejudice. "Retarded" is a fairly bad word, and inappropriate in this context.

    A prejuediced coward, that's all you are.

  • On the post: EU's ACTA Champion Rejects European Parliament Member's Request For ACTA Documents

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2011 @ 11:48am

    Re:

    Doesn't merely saying the truth sometimes have the power to take all the power out of what you talk about?

    Saying "This is what we want, and this is what we are going to have, end of discussion" would make any laws derived from ACTA into something akin to a Caesar's decree, something minimally, grudgingly, enforced, but not respected.

    Saying that about enough laws, and the whole legal structure would get called into question. I personally would think the legitimacy of a legal system where things like ACTA get decreed would be minimal. I just might become a scofflaw, with only official respect for "officers" of the "court", "judges", "laws" and "legislators".

  • On the post: More Video Game Makers Fear The Free Market And Don't Know How To Compete

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2011 @ 11:42am

    Re: Re: Re: Ferrari vs Hyundai, cost to build

    You're kidding, right?

    I mean, you just demonstrated complete ignorance of basic, basic market economics.

    But go ahead, follow that path to paradox. I'd recommend that you start by not putting insults in your responses. That makes you look childish, even if it just might score points with some judges and some jurors.

    Educate me. What other costs should I be including in a distinction between a physical good, and a digital good? And how, exactly, would that effect Epic Games pricing, or business model? I'm open to suggestion.

  • On the post: EU's ACTA Champion Rejects European Parliament Member's Request For ACTA Documents

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2011 @ 07:56am

    My takeaway on ACTA

    Dear me, I double posted, sorry.

    My takeaway from ACTA is that you can stonewall by being boring. The ACTA people, from the US Trade Rep office on down, just bore people, critics, sychophantic lawmakers, everyone. The ACTA people are boring beyond any previous benchmark.

    The dogged boringness seems to have worked. Nobody's too excited about it at all.

  • On the post: EU's ACTA Champion Rejects European Parliament Member's Request For ACTA Documents

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2011 @ 07:53am

    My takeaway on ACTA

  • On the post: More Video Game Makers Fear The Free Market And Don't Know How To Compete

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2011 @ 07:35am

    Re: Ferrari vs Hyundai, cost to build

    The car market has a lot of price points.

    On the high end, Bentley, Ferrari, Lamborghini can make money with hand-made high style cars. On the low end Hyundai can get by on mass-producing mass-market cars. Looks to me like there's everything in-between, too.

    But I bet both Ferrari and Hyundai management is sensitive to cost of production, they're just sensitive to different aspects.

    But the Good Ol' Car Analogy doesn't hold water. Once tooling for a car gets set up and processes figured out, time and cost to produce go to a minimum, but still quite high, value. A car is a physical good, and just raw materials have a cost. But a video game, that's a digital good. Once built, it has a near-zero cost of reproduction. In a competitive market, the cost of a good should fall to the marginal cost of production, near zero. That's simple free market economics. The marginal cost of production of a car is still large compared to a digital good.

  • On the post: Announcing: Freetard 2: Free Harder

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 21 Apr, 2011 @ 05:29am

    Re:

    "Steal from artists", you're kidding, right?

    Supposing some use was not deemed fair use (take it to court for a real decision) it would be "infringement" and not "theft".

    For theft to happen, the artist would have to have use of something taken away involuntarily. The artist never lost use of the art. That's an important enough distinction that even the "Intellectual Property" maximalists should want to make it.

    Bad shill, no payoff!

  • On the post: Unsealed Document Reveals 'Sham' Copyright Assignments To Righthaven

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2011 @ 08:03pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    You know, you're correct, the actual testimony of the folks on both sides of the deal was that the intent was to transfer the copyrights.

    But most of those same people stood to make some serious money if SCOG was granted the copyrights. So, maybe we have to weight that testimony, and find it wanting.

    Unfortunately, all of the documents showed that the intent was to NOT transfer the copyrights.

    Given what we know about eye witness testimony, especially that of people who stand to make money, it's best we assume that the intent was as documented, not as remembered.

  • On the post: Unsealed Document Reveals 'Sham' Copyright Assignments To Righthaven

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2011 @ 03:35pm

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

    Tor Braham specifically kept the records because he was aware of the gravity of the sale, the historic nature of sellin Unix itself. He knew that what he was doing was important, probably because of his background in IP law.

    Second, he was a *partner* at Wilson Sonsini. I understand that law firms handle a lot of different kinds of legal work, but still, Wilson Sonsini partner pretty much qualifies as an IP specialist, don't you think? Especially in the mid 90s, before all the IP maximalism got ramped up?

    Third, quit while you're ahead. Yes, a Good Lawyer just keeps going in hopes that something will stick, but it does your personal case no good in this particular venue. Refusing to give up makes you look illogical.

  • On the post: Unsealed Document Reveals 'Sham' Copyright Assignments To Righthaven

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2011 @ 02:02pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    How do you account for the outside counsel to Novell, Tor Braham, keeping track of essentially everything that he did, and having it all available for his declaration in the SCOG v Novell Slander of Title case?

    http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20070421204625419

    In his declaration, Braham reveals that he was a specialist in "complex corporate transactions", as a partner in Wilson Sonsini.

    It seems that your entire thesis is wrong: not only did Novell engage specialists for counsel, that very specialist kept elaborate records because he understood the gravity and potential historicity of the transaction.

    Keep on Bustin' That FUD!

  • On the post: Dutch Publishing Organization Says Filesharing Should Be A Criminal Offense

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2011 @ 02:02pm

    I only engage in legal filesharing

    The only things I've ever downloaded via BitTorrent are Slackware Linux ISO images. That seems to be the preferred method of distribution of Slackware according to Slackware.com itself, near the time of release of a new version.

    Why do the Dutch Publishers want to make me into a criminal?

    This plan is extremely silly. All it does is make "The Internet" into some kind of a unicast medium, like Tee Vee or Radio. "We publish the Content, you pay for the content". That's a load of rubbish.

  • On the post: YouTube Launches Myth Perpetuating 'Copyright School'; Dismisses Remixes As 'Not Original'

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2011 @ 10:59am

    Re: Re:

    Bullwinkle was from Frostbite Falls, Minnesota, a proud American Moose, not some craven, piratical Canadian Moose, like Ren and/or Stimpy.

  • On the post: YouTube Launches Myth Perpetuating 'Copyright School'; Dismisses Remixes As 'Not Original'

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2011 @ 10:57am

    I had much the same reaction.

    I watched this yesterday, and I had much the same reaction. It seems like a heavy-handed joke, but if you think about in a deliberately naive way, it makes the US Judicial Branch into a literal mechanism for hammering people doing commonplace things (sharing a video with other fans) into conforming.

    It even has the Techdirt Troll's Obsession with getting an experienced copyright lawyer to judge infringement or not. If they were telling the truth they wouldn't have put this weird advice in.

    I'm guessing that some group at youtube tricked a really obsessive "experienced copyright lawyer" to go completely overboard, and then had an animator with a sense of humor illustrate the overboard nature of experienced copyright lawyering.

  • On the post: FBI Hijacks Botnet, With Court Order… Then Issues Kill Signal To Millions Of Computers

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2011 @ 10:43am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Misleading headline

    Back atcha, "pal". Sock-pupppeting a troll is still trolling, "Coward".

  • On the post: FBI Hijacks Botnet, With Court Order… Then Issues Kill Signal To Millions Of Computers

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2011 @ 11:57am

    Re: Re: Misleading headline

    Sock-puppet much?

  • On the post: FBI Hijacks Botnet, With Court Order… Then Issues Kill Signal To Millions Of Computers

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 14 Apr, 2011 @ 11:54am

    Re: It doesn't look like the FBI is doing any programming...

    Of course the FBI isn't writing any software. Ever heard of the "Virtual Case File" fiasco? (http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/who-killed-the-virtual-case-file)

    The FBI has traditionally been an all-IBM shop, in particular, an all-mainframe shop. The FBI's first website, way back when, was hosted ON A NASA MACHINE. That's right, the FBI didn't have anything that could run a web server in 1995 or so.

    The internal FBI culture probably prevents them from having anyone tech-savvy enough to do this kind of thing.

  • On the post: MPAA Praises Government Censorship And Lack Of Due Process

    Bruce Ediger ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2011 @ 12:37pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Censorship is when the government stop you from expressing your own opinions

    No, I've had a car stolen from me, and then it ended in an impound lot. Note: stolen, not infringed upon. By the Bad Car Analogy, anything infringed upon, but not legally acknowledged as such should be impounded (seized!) until someone drops by to pick it up, after paying "towing fees" and "storage costs" for their stolen Most Holy Intellectual Property.

    So you believe that ever bad analogy in an argument belongs to a person who has been through a logic class and awarded a good grade?

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