Hulser 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: New Rules To Block 'Distracted Driving' Will Likely Make Things Worse, Not Better

    Hulser ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 01:17pm

    Re: Re: Screw phones

    I have to worry about all the things everyone else is doing while driving.

    Wait, there was a time when you didn't have to pay attention to other drivers? Whether it's eating, fiddling with the radio, putting on makeup, or texting, there's always been distracted driving. And there's therefore always been a need for defensive driving.

  • On the post: How New Internet Spying Laws Will Actually ENABLE Stalkers, Spammers, Phishers And, Yes, Pedophiles & Terrorists

    Hulser ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 11:32am

    Re: Re: Re: But there is no database!

    I am sorry to burst your bubble but...

    Burst my bubble? Are you sure you replied to the right post? My post was about how politicians can say one thing and, through weasel words, mean something completely different. It had nothing to do with the specifics of how data loggers work, one way or otherwise.

  • On the post: How New Internet Spying Laws Will Actually ENABLE Stalkers, Spammers, Phishers And, Yes, Pedophiles & Terrorists

    Hulser ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 09:32am

    Re: But there is no database!

    Fact: This proposed legislation will not require either police or telecommunications service providers to create databases with information collected on Canadians.

    This could still be a fact if...

    1) The database already exists. "We said that we wouldn't *create* a database; we didn't say that if we already had one, we couldn't use it to store these data."

    2) It's not a database. "That's not a 'database', silly. We're storing all the data in an Excel file that Stan keep on his laptop. Stan is a good guy. He hardly ever forgets his laptop behind at the coffee shop."

    3) The law stipulates that other parties have to collect the data and turn it over to the police. "Well, we can't trust the ISPs to collect this data because they're so obsessed with 'customer privacy' or some such nonsense, so we have to make the ISPs pay for a whole new category of company to log the data for them. Which of course means that they need to have access to all of the ISPs systems. And this totally isn't because we're trying to weasel out of our earlier promise. We're doing this for you!"

    4) They're not "Canadians". "No no no, I can see where you'd think that we mean no Canadians would have their activity logged and turned over to the police. That's an easy mistake to make. What we meant, of course, is that we get to track all activity of all Internet traffic that comes through Canada. If the traffic just so happens to be by Canadians, then that's not our fault."

  • On the post: How New Internet Spying Laws Will Actually ENABLE Stalkers, Spammers, Phishers And, Yes, Pedophiles & Terrorists

    Hulser ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2012 @ 09:13am

    Secret

    They're not very likely to be caught by any of the measures in these bills because they'll (a) read the text and (b) evade the enumerated measures.

    Careful Rich, you're libel to be referenced by lawmakers as an expert in favor of keeping the details of this law secret. "Well, we can't just let the bad guys know what we're logging, so it *has* to be secret! Even TechDirt agrees to that!"

  • On the post: Streaming Rights On Whitney Houston Movie NOT Pulled In Order To 'Make Really A Large Amount Of Money On DVD Sales' [Updated]

    Hulser ( profile ), 20 Feb, 2012 @ 12:45pm

    The Houston Clause?

    the production company pulled the streaming rights from us

    They can do that? I would think that it'd be a no-brainer for Netflix to stipulate in the contract with the media company that they can't just arbitrarily pull the rights on a particular movie. But then again, the content companies have Netflix over a barrel, so maybe there's a clause in the contract for this very thing. Still, it seems odd that they can just yank a single title.

  • On the post: IFPI & Other Lobbyists Tell Parliament That ACTA Protests Silence The Democratic Process

    Hulser ( profile ), 16 Feb, 2012 @ 12:35pm

    Re: Re: Guilt by Conflation

    it's really just electronic heckling

    I would agree that it's not cencorship in the same way that taking down a whole site for an undefined period of time for an indefined reason is, but it's close enough for the big media companies to have some justification in their claim of curtailing their ability to participate in the democratic process.

  • On the post: IFPI & Other Lobbyists Tell Parliament That ACTA Protests Silence The Democratic Process

    Hulser ( profile ), 16 Feb, 2012 @ 09:30am

    Guilt by Conflation

    If by "attacks", they're referring to the general uproar on the Internet and the negative feedback, then their statement is patently absurd. But..if they're talking about literal attacks i.e. DoS attacks or other forms of hacking, I can at least see some shred of logic.

    If you pull off some traditional civil disobedience, like chaining yourself to a tree or marching in the streets without a permit, you may be inconveniencing others, but you're not taking away their freedom of speech or their ability to be involved in the democratic process. But if you take down a website which represents an opposing opinion, you are in effect censoring their speech. So, at least in this way, they may be right.

    But overall, these attackers do more harm than good. Yes, it may draw attention to the issue, but it allows big media companies to use one of their standard tricks, Guilt by Conflation: associate two different things together and respond to objections using whichever one better supports your position. They did it with counterfeiting and infringement and certainly looks like they're doing it now with "attacks" and "protests".

  • On the post: SOPA Strikedown Aftermath: Old Media Cannot Tell The Narrative Of One Million People

    Hulser ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2012 @ 10:12am

    To summarize...

    1) The medium is the message.
    2) The Internet is infinite.
    3) The Internet message is infinite.

  • On the post: The Onion Explains SOPA And PIPA (As Only The Onion Can)

    Hulser ( profile ), 27 Jan, 2012 @ 07:54am

    Re: Re:

    The MPAA and RIAA probably think The Onion is as reputable a news source as FOX news.
    It is.

    But seriously folks, it's a shame that "fake news" acts as more of a watchdog than the traditional media outlets do.

  • On the post: Megaupload Shutdown Means Other Companies Turning Off Useful Services

    Hulser ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2012 @ 09:43am

    Un/intended consequences

    These kinds of things were exactly what people have been warning about... and yet the US government ignored all those warnings (and probably still doesn't realize what it's kicked off here).

    One would think that a normal part of the DOJ analysis on whether to move ahead with a certain legal action would be to 1) consider the possible consequences of that action and 2) after the action is taken, to review what the actual consequences were. What scary is that the DOJ either didn't do Option 1, did do Option 1, but wanted these chilling effects, or hasn't done Option 2. Any combination of those options is frightening.

    Can they really be called unintended consequences if you never even bother to consider the consquences in the first place?

  • On the post: Johnson & Johnson Refuses To License Three HIV Drugs To Medicines Patent Pool; Invites Patent Override

    Hulser ( profile ), 30 Dec, 2011 @ 08:29am

    Re: Re:

    The fundamental issue is that the company sees the value of such patents as monetary whereas the victims and their physicians see the value of such patents as their ability to fill that medical necessity.

    How the company actually sees things is irrelevent to the OP's point. The point is that the Medicines Patent Pool is stating that its model would be a "win" for J&J, which by any rational interpretation, would mean that it would be more profitable than doing business in the traditional way. But there is nothing in the quote from the Medicines Patent Pool to support this assertion. It could very well be documented somewhere else, but you'd think that this information would be important enough to include in the actual post instead of leaving it to trust in an organization that most TD readers have probably never heard of.

  • On the post: Johnson & Johnson Refuses To License Three HIV Drugs To Medicines Patent Pool; Invites Patent Override

    Hulser ( profile ), 30 Dec, 2011 @ 08:13am

    Re:

    I read the patent pool explanation and I don't see how it gets the patent holder anywhere near the money they would have controling the monopoly.

    I don't either. The quote from the Medicines Patent Pools makes blanket statements about the benefits of the patent pool model, but nothing in the quote provides any rationale. The patent pool model is described as a "win-win-win" but this just flies in the face of common sense. Now, I admit that I know next to nothing about patent pools, so there could be a perfectly logical reason that they would actually benefit big pharma as well as the patients, but there's nothing in this post that explains how.

  • On the post: Johnson & Johnson Refuses To License Three HIV Drugs To Medicines Patent Pool; Invites Patent Override

    Hulser ( profile ), 30 Dec, 2011 @ 08:00am

    "no urgency"?

    "Johnson & Johnson says there is no urgency for making these drugs widely available in developing countries"

    I seemed unlikely to me that a corporation would make such a blatantly crass statement, so I went looking for an original quote. (The quote above is second hand, via DWB.)

    I couldn't find a quote that matched the "no urgency" message, but but here's a quote from Will Stephens, "vp of global access and partnerships at J&J?s Janssen Global Services"...

    "Because WHO treatment guidelines drive the public health treatment focus and national guidelines in resource-limited countries, the current clinical demand for our medicines is extremely limited there. In addition, HIV resistance testing is not widely available in resource-limited settings, which makes the contruction (sic) of active treatment regimens challenging. As a result treatment of 3rd-line patients is largely restricted to centers of excellence where physicians have specialist knowledge and/or access to resistance testing."

    http://www.pharmalot.com/2011/12/johnson-johnson-rebuffs-medicines-patent-pool/

    Maybe someone with some expertise in the area can provide better insight, but what he appears to be saying is that developing countries don't have the capabilities required to test for the kinds of conditions that would be addressed by the drugs in question. So, maybe he's using the term "demand" to mean the demand of the clinicians in the developing countries -- which would kinda, almost make a tiny bit of sense -- and not to mean the demand of the actual kids dying of AIDS -- which would not only be blatantly crass and insensitive, but just plain dumb from a business standpoint.

  • On the post: GoDaddy Officially Has Name Removed From Judiciary's List Of SOPA Supporters

    Hulser ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2011 @ 04:53pm

    it seems that the Judiciary Committee is going to be kept busy whittling down this list.

    Or...they'll just ignore the removal requests and continue to cite the original list as if it were still accurate. Much like they continue to use debunked study results.

  • On the post: Universal Music Takes Down 50 Cent's Official YouTube Video

    Hulser ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2011 @ 04:39pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Maybe you're thinking of the RIAA?

    I would have thought the distinction was quite easy to see.

    What's quite easy to see, to everyone but you apparently, is that my question was about the distinction as it relates to your baffling implication that somehow the "managers" have more control of IP than the "owners". Are you sure you don't work for an online help desk? They use the same trick of addressing a single sentence out of a paragraph and ignoring the actual question being asked.

    I'll try again...

    Because while UMG might have the ultimate ownership, their subsidiary, Interscope, has management of it.

    If UMG has the "ultimate ownership" of the video, what relevance does it have who manages it or whether someone designated is as "official"? Do you really think that these factors override who owns the copyright?

  • On the post: Universal Music Takes Down 50 Cent's Official YouTube Video

    Hulser ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2011 @ 12:25pm

    Re: Re: Maybe you're thinking of the RIAA?

    Please explain to us how, if this video is official, it can be unauthorized, ever? Because while UMG might have the ultimate ownership, their subsidiary, Interscope, has management of it.

    Please explain to us what distinction you make between ?ownership? and ?management?? You seem to be implying that because Interscope is ?managing? the video, it somehow trumps UMG?s rights in ?owning? the video. It clearly doesn?t. Of course I don?t have access to the contracts, but I?d bet money that even if UMG is taking the funds to make the video out of 50 Cent?s cut, they still retain ultimate ownership of the IP. Just because someone put an ?Official video? stamp on the video doesn?t change this.

  • On the post: Universal Music Takes Down 50 Cent's Official YouTube Video

    Hulser ( profile ), 27 Dec, 2011 @ 10:40am

    Maybe you're thinking of the RIAA?

    Remember how the music labels like to say that everything they do is for the sake of the artists on their label?

    No, I don't. I know this is a bit of innocent hyperbole, but even if some representative of a recording company said something that outrageous, it wouldn't be taken seriously. It's understood that the primary purpose of any company, much less a recording company, is to make money. Now, organizations like the RIAA, on the other hand, do claim to represent the best interests of the artists. (A claim that is almost, but not quite as laughable as it would be if made by a recording company.) I'd see your main point about hypocrisy being relevant if it were the RIAA who somehow got the video pulled, but not UMG.

    For the record, I think it's counterproductive to UMG's profits to pull the video, but I think they're within their rights. It may be stupid, but not hypocritical.

  • On the post: Ridiculous: Lamar Smith Basing His Plan To Massively Regulate The Internet On False Or Misleading Research

    Hulser ( profile ), 15 Dec, 2011 @ 09:16am

    McCarthyism

    Lamar Smith's name should forever be branded with the fact that he tried to mislead his way into setting up America's first internet blacklist.

    "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

  • On the post: Dutch Collection Society Found To Be Source Of Infringing Content

    Hulser ( profile ), 13 Dec, 2011 @ 07:03am

    Secret weapon

    Of course things like sex, money, drugs make for a good scandal, but to really achieve a grade A, world class, blockbuster scandal, you need hypocrisy. The politician caught cheating on his wife with a prostitute? Normal scandal. The politician who ran on family values caught cheating on his wife with a prostitute? Now you're talking!

    It may not be enough, but I think hypocrisy will be a secret weapon against stupid copyright laws. Given our current laws, much less the draconian laws being proposed now, it's impossible to not infringe on some IP on an almost hourly basis. So anyone or any organization which is a vocal supporter of IP maximalism is just setting themselves up for the scandal-ready hypocrisy outlined in this post. You can bet that there will be more of these kinds of discoveries. Let's here it for crowdsourcing.

  • On the post: RIAA Claims It Succeeded In Getting Piracy Under Control Years Ago

    Hulser ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2011 @ 09:25am

    Re:

    Didn't I just read an article submitted by YOU, and suppported by you that showed that music piracy has actually decreased while movie piracy has increased?

    You know what would be helpful in answering that question? The person who is making an accusation i.e. "YOU" providing a link to the relevant Techdirt post. Otherwise your comment is just noise.

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