Jeremy Lyman 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Ajit Pai Now Trying To Pretend That Everybody Supported Net Neutrality Repeal

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2018 @ 08:15am

    Re:

    Yup.

  • On the post: Canadian Music Industry Pitches 'You Must Be A Pirate' Tax On Smartphones

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2018 @ 04:56am

    When you're used to blaming others for failure

    They're just used to it being someone else's fault for their decline into irrelevance. We're making less money, so SOMEONE needs to make up the difference...

    Isn't the streaming activity that's supplanting disc sales by definition not "piracy" but legally rented content? Taxing mobile devices because that's where streaming happens is literally taxing a legal competitive format, not penalizing illegal copyright infringement or devices where that infringement happens.

    It makes as little sense as taxing reusable bags because people are buying less soda.

  • On the post: Amazon Alexa Instantaneously Justifies Years Of Surveillance Paranoia

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 30 May, 2018 @ 07:33am

    Re: The Pessimists are ALWAYS right

    The pessimists are always wrong.

    Note: to determine the validity of this statement, you must first determine whether I am an optimist or a pessimist.

  • On the post: The Demise Of Copyright Toleration

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 25 May, 2018 @ 04:11am

    Let me ask my lawyer

    Not every case is clear; not every outcome can be enforced; and not every potential legal outcome can be endured. Instead, “grey area” conduct must be implicitly licensed, or at least tolerated.

    Hey Abe, what do you think about this "grey area" reverse lottery screwing people at random to keep everyone in constant fear?

    "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly."

    Hmmm, yeah that's smart. Thanks.

  • On the post: FBI Admits It's Been Using A Highly-Inflated Number Of Locked Devices To Push Its 'Going Dark' Narrative

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 23 May, 2018 @ 04:27am

    What's in the box?

    Beyond the raw device numbers, we should also be questioning what indispensable information resides solely on the devices the FBI does possess. What are the stats on evidence they have knowledge of but are unable to physically obtain vs devices that are fishing expeditions looking to more dirt on suspects? Remember "he uses an encrypted phone" is not probable cause.

    Keep in mind this is data which isn't backed-up/duplicated on a server somewhere, which on my phone is... nothing.

  • On the post: Nearly Everyone In The U.S. And Canada Just Had Their Private Cell Phone Location Data Exposed

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 21 May, 2018 @ 12:14pm

    Re:

    Clearly, in addition to mandating encryption back-doors, the FBI needs to ban removable batteries to ensure they don't "go dark".

  • On the post: Comcast Found To Be Charging $90 Installation Fees At Homes Where Comcast Is Already In Use

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 18 May, 2018 @ 04:45am

    Fees For Everything.

    The most Egregious fee I paid when I was a Comcast Customer was a $50 charge to come and disconnect my service when I quit. Not for breaking a contract, missing equipment, or anything else. The fee for a tech disconnecting my cable was a half month's bill. I could not believe they had the audacity to charge me in order to stop charging me but I was so sick and tired of them I said "fine schedule the appointment".

  • On the post: Congressional Members Decide It's Time To Make Assaulting A Police Officer A Federal Hate Crime

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 17 May, 2018 @ 06:52am

    Re: "What do you mean I have to go really fast as a racecar driver?"

    "Widen the gap" is an important point. The public needs to feel protected by police, not scared of them. Frankly, for every extra protection afforded to officers, there should be additional penalties added for violating public trust. If you behaved atrociously enough to revoke your qualified immunity, the penalty for abusing these protections should make punishment double that of a civilian convicted of the same crime.

  • On the post: Software Legend Ray Ozzie Thinks He Can Safely Backdoor Encryption; He's Very Wrong

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 27 Apr, 2018 @ 10:00am

    Re:

    As a consumer, I tend to avoid products with "intentional catastrophic failure at request of manufacturer" listed among features on the label.

  • On the post: The Washington Post Thinks Overpaying For Broadband Bundles Is A Hoot

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2018 @ 10:49am

    Re: Re: straw man argument

    If you bought everything on the buffet at a la carte prices it'd cost more than the buffet fee. Yeah, true enough, but I also can't eat everything on the buffet in a single meal. Why would I even try replicating a service that is excessive? Subscribe to a service and consume what you want, then subscribe to another one with different offerings. It's like people can't understand NOT paying a subscription every month for the rest of your life.

  • On the post: License Plate Reader Company Says Public Records Requests For ALPR Documents Are Just Clickbait

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 11 Apr, 2018 @ 05:14am

    Re: Re: Let me paraphrase

    Right, but couldn't they counteract EFF's misrepresentation by just explaining themselves what they do and how their systems work? Surely that'd be more accurate than EFF trying to reconstruct what happens based on publicly available documents like a crime scene investigator.

  • On the post: Recordings Capture Cops Discussing Department's Most Rotten Apple

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 06 Apr, 2018 @ 04:58am

    Public Accountability Credit Score

    So is there a company maintaining a database of publicly viewable charges and reprimands of law enforcement officers? Like the ALPRs they think are such a good idea, and help identify criminals when they move to new areas?

    We've become accustomed to the fact that these bad apples are not punished for violating the public trust, but even worse they tend to just pack up and get a job doing the same thing in a new town.

  • On the post: License Plate Reader Company Says Public Records Requests For ALPR Documents Are Just Clickbait

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 06 Apr, 2018 @ 04:26am

    Let me paraphrase

    "If they knew the full extent of what we're doing it would scare people into giving them money to help stop it"

    Is that about it?

  • On the post: Not Everything Needs Copyright: Lawyers Flip Out That Photos Taken By AI May Be Public Domain

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2018 @ 05:01am

    Re: Re: Let's talk AI

    Owning the camera doesn't enter into it. If I lend you my camera and you take some pictures which I then delete, then I'm destroying your intellectual property. But that's because you're a person who decided to create something.

    I think a big confusing factor in all this is people's personification of current AI tech. Right now all AI means is that we don't really know how the algorithms doing a task work. It's easier for us to imagine the software "deciding" to do something but it's as pre-determined as any intentionally (albeit very advanced) designed algorithm.

    So take the camera's "person-hood" out of the equation and ask "if a developer wrote an advanced app that framed, focused, metered, and took beautiful photos, does that programmer own the copyright on those photos? Does the person who bought the app?"

  • On the post: Not Everything Needs Copyright: Lawyers Flip Out That Photos Taken By AI May Be Public Domain

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2018 @ 04:47am

    Re: Re: I'd like to see that blog post

    Question: How does clips evaluate whether to take a photo if it is not constantly capturing visual information while it is active? Is there a lower resolution mode which is evaluated by the neural net and then a high-res capture when it "takes" a picture?

  • On the post: Not Everything Needs Copyright: Lawyers Flip Out That Photos Taken By AI May Be Public Domain

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 02 Apr, 2018 @ 10:59am

    Let's talk AI

    In my estimation, this case isn't the example which should be used to determine whether "AI" can hold a copyright. Since the camera is attached to a wearer, thousands of images are "captured" and the software is simply evaluating whether an image is worth retaining. It has no involvement in framing or composing the picture, only whether or not to purge it from memory.

    What we're really talking about is whether people or companies which have no copyright interest should be able to claim a copyright where there was previously none. If this was really about "artificial intelligence" the conversation would be about sentience, person-hood, and the ownership rights of synthetic persons. These advocates aren't saying programs should have rights, they're just making an intellectual property grab for themselves.

  • On the post: School Sells Out Students' First Amendment Rights, Apologizes And Deletes Article Containing Controversial Images

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2018 @ 05:00am

    Probably wasn't a math teacher.

    "behalf of what he said was 99.9% of the teachers "
    They've got at least 1,000 teachers at this school? What are the class sizes like?

  • On the post: Uber's Video Shows The Arizona Crash Victim Probably Didn't Cause Crash, Human Behind The Wheel Not Paying Attention

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2018 @ 05:45am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Right, accidents are bug reports. And as immoral as that sounds, it's actually huge progress. If an accident can remove a class of fatalities from an entire system, it's better than the human controlled "repeat the same mistakes thousands of times" standard we have now.

  • On the post: California Introduces New, Tougher Net Neutrality Rules; Uses Ajit Pai's Abdication Of Authority Against The FCC

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2018 @ 08:37am

    Re: Re: Re: So, gov't does know best! The solution is regulation!

    Yup, we were very worried that they'd codify the exact opposite of what Network Neutrality means today. We were wrong about Tom Wheeler as well, he was no dingo.

  • On the post: California Introduces New, Tougher Net Neutrality Rules; Uses Ajit Pai's Abdication Of Authority Against The FCC

    Jeremy Lyman ( profile ), 16 Mar, 2018 @ 08:34am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: There are ALREADY Federal Rules by which STATES must work.

    Sadly neither costs as much as you would expect.

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