Jan Bilek 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Sony's Insane Fear Of 'Piracy' Means Many Movies Now Suck In Digital Theaters

    Jan Bilek ( profile ), 27 May, 2011 @ 12:59am

    I sent the link half an hour ago... I am afraid some anti-spam script evaluated it as spam.

    Just google "FFFILM: Konec titulků v Čech?ch?"

    BTW, the title means "The end of subtitles in Czechia?"

  • On the post: Sony's Insane Fear Of 'Piracy' Means Many Movies Now Suck In Digital Theaters

    Jan Bilek ( profile ), 26 May, 2011 @ 10:38pm

    translators

    Czech translator who makes subtitles for American movies wrote article (in Czech, sorry) about how difficult it has become to translate movies because of the restrictions enforced by studios.

    For example he claims that when he is asked to do the translation, he gets the copy of the movie with action scenes cut out and other scenes fuzzy so he can only see speaking person's mouth. It can be difficult to understand the meaning of a sentence without knowing the context... so sometimes subtitles don't even make sense.

    And I guess American studios will be really surprised when they find out that many Czechs have given up on going to cinemas and prefer pirated movies with subtitles made by fans, which can be much better than official subtitles.

  • On the post: What 4th Amendment? Indiana Sheriff Says Random, Warrantless House To House Searches Are Okay

    Jan Bilek ( profile ), 19 May, 2011 @ 02:14pm

    Re: Re: OMG!

    Yes, I do live in my home country and no, it isn't the US. But...

    1. I've been to the US, I've spent important part of my life there, I've met many friends there and I love that country. That's why I am sad.

    2. The US still has the great power and can exercise its influence all over the world. There are many of us, who are not American citizens and have no influence over your politicians... but whatever you let them do will have impact on us. That's what makes me worried.

  • On the post: What 4th Amendment? Indiana Sheriff Says Random, Warrantless House To House Searches Are Okay

    Jan Bilek ( profile ), 19 May, 2011 @ 10:25am

    OMG!

    I grew up in east-european totalitarian communist regime... and I always looked up to the paradise of freedom and respect to human rights - United States of America.

    It's kind of sad to see that my home country now seems to be better and much more free place to live than the USA - not because my country got so much better but because your country got so much worse. What is going on, guys? How come that now the land of freedom does not seem so much different than China when it comes to respect to human rights? When are you going to do something about it?

    I tell you... I remember one revolution and it felt really good;-)

  • On the post: Patent Troll Lodsys: All We Want Is 0.575% Of The Entire Mobile In-App Payment Ecosystem, Is That So Wrong?

    Jan Bilek ( profile ), 18 May, 2011 @ 09:15am

    Shift?

    Dear Americans, it seems to me that with your patent system you have created huge system for transferring money from those who actually do stuff to government granted monopoly holders and their lawyers.

    So far it seemed to affect only huge corporations... but now even small guys have to worry. This is huge burden on business, fear of getting sued is not the best environment for creating new and exciting things - are you not afraid that startups start to move out of your jurisdiction?

    I know that Silicon Valley is the best place for startups and whatnot... but if this software patents craziness goes on, are pros of being in the Valley going to be enough to outweigh burden of being in the US?

    I am not even sure people would actually have to move out of the Valley - in some cases maybe just registering their companies somewhere on Cyprus or in Estonia or some tax paradise island would be enough... which would not be good for your economy, right?

  • On the post: Patent Troll Going After iPhone/iPad Developers Who Use In-App Payments

    Jan Bilek ( profile ), 14 May, 2011 @ 08:33am

    jurisdiction?

    I hear that the first news about small developers getting C&D was brought to light in a tweet from Glasgow, Scotland-based developer James Thomson who got one of those... and I don't get it.

    As far as I know Scotland is in European Union and not in the United States and we don't have software patents in EU... so why should we care about idiotic american patent system? Why should Thomas not treat that cease and desist letter as low quality toilet paper? The guy is Scotland based and US courts have no jurisdiction over Scotland - how can they threaten him... and all of us, non-US based app developers? What am I missing?

    Anyway... I know that Silicon Valley is the best place for start-ups and whatnot, but I wonder when are pros of being in the Valley going to outweigh cons of being located in United States and start-ups start to move to less anti-innovation countries.