Jeffrey Nonken 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Paul Vixie Explains How PROTECT IP Will Break The Internet

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2011 @ 05:12pm

    Acceptable collateral damage

    As long as we mildly inconvenience a few sites that we assert are guilty, it doesn't matter how many innocents we mow down in the process of assuring the safety and well-being of all.

    Due process be hanged. We are the righteous! And don't cloud the issue with inconvenient facts.

  • On the post: RealNetworks Destroying Dutch Webmaster's Life Because He Linked To A Reverse Engineered Alternative

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2011 @ 04:43pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    OK, NOW I've just read your comments in other threads and I have more context for this remark.

  • On the post: RealNetworks Destroying Dutch Webmaster's Life Because He Linked To A Reverse Engineered Alternative

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2011 @ 04:38pm

    Re: Re:

    So... which laws apply, then? Is it illegal to link to non-infringing content? That must make publishing web sites pretty... exciting. Or maybe no Dutch web sites include any links at all?

    Of course, maybe what you mean is that Real Alternative has been judged illegal in the Netherlands. Is there a court case you can link to? That would be interesting too. That and the fact that you're held liable for infringing content on somebody else's website.

  • On the post: EA's Origin Service Wants To Exchange Games For Your Personal Data [Updated]

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2011 @ 04:19pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: punkbuster

    I've been a FPS gamer for almost two decades (and I've been playing multiplayer games since 1974) and at this point due to this crap EA isn't even on my f'ing RADAR.

  • On the post: Jay-Z & Kanye Accused Of Infringement… On Album They Worked So Hard To Stop From Leaking

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2011 @ 12:06pm

    Re: Re: Aha!

    I'm sure that was the exact thought process they went through.

  • On the post: US Copyright Group Lawsuits Based On Highly Questionable Evidence

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2011 @ 10:22am

    Re: Re: Re:

    Assuming you're picking on his spelling:

    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gray
    http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/grey

    ...it looks like grey is considered an alternate spelling for gray.

  • On the post: Court Slams Righthaven (Again); Refuses To Let It Back Into Democratic Underground Case

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2011 @ 04:00pm

    At what point does persistence become dogged stupidity?

    "At what point do the folks at Righthaven finally realize it's time to give up?"

    Two days after the heat death of the universe, about 4:30 in the afternoon.

  • On the post: More Misplaced Hatred For The Used Games Market

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2011 @ 12:48pm

    Re:

    I'm going to use your remark as a springboard here:

    "If he's saying Gamestop sells new games below cost then asks the publisher to make up the difference (then, once that is done, makes money off the resale of the used game it claims it didn't profit on initially), then he's kind of got an argument."

    Depends. Is the publisher asking Gamestop for $1000 per game? $100? $10? $1? If the publisher is pricing the game too high for the market (or at least too high for Gamestop to make a profit while selling it at a marketable price) and Gamestop is adjusting for that, the lines of responsibility start to blur.

    But even then, assuming you're correct, what he's saying is that Gamestop is behaving unethically regarding the initial sale -- which has nothing to do with their making profit on the used game market. It may be maddening and hypocritical, but the answer is not to try to cripple the used game market, which they have no legal or ethical control over -- it's to fix the pricing issues on the initial sale, over which they have both.

    Otherwise you could take that one step further and claim that by buying the game at an artificially low price (what Gamestop is charging me) and then selling the game later, I'm a party to the same (illegal and/or unethical) act, even if I don't happen to sell the game back to Gamestop.

    Sorry about Yet Another Car Analogy, but Fo... Chr... uh, hmm, GM didn't get to profit when I resold my old Nova. Krups doesn't get a cut if my coffee maker goes for $15 at a yard sale. I got a really nice used microwave for $30 once; Samsung didn't get a dime, nor did they expect to. And Sears isn't knocking at my door with a cease-and-desist (or my neighbor's) because I bought my neighbor's old router. (Wood, not network. :) A large percentage of the books in my collection were purchased from perfectly legitimate used book stores. I've been known to sell books to them. Neither Daw nor Tor nor Baen nor et.al. have been trying to shake them down that I've heard of.

    If the gaming distributors have a problem with the way Gamestop is selling new games, then they should address that problem, not try to use it as an excuse to get a cut of the used game market. If they want a cut of the used game market they should set up a used game exchange. You know, like Gamestop has done.

    "Of course, the publishers could just not agree to adjust Gamestop's price based on such claims of loss."

    Or some other change in the arrangements, but yes. That would qualify as addressing the correct problem.

  • On the post: Debate On Software Patents Fails To Convince Silicon Valley That Patents Increase Innovation

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2011 @ 12:09pm

    Drat, I'm a hypocrite too

    "...argued that Professor Lee was probably a hypocrite, because while he contributed to open source software, he probably wanted to get paid for his book..."

    I've contributed (an admittedly minuscule amount) to open source myself, and plan to contribute more, but for some reason I expect to be paid in my day job (which is writing proprietary software and firmware).

    It's astonishingly hypocritical of me and I'm deeply ashamed at taking advantage of my talents to pay the rent and feed my family instead of starving to death in a noisome gutter somewhere.

  • On the post: Case That Righthaven Had 'Won' By Default Now Dismissed For Lack Of Standing

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2011 @ 11:57pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Errors

    He's actually praising Mike for the correctness of his post because it was the only error he could find. :)

  • On the post: A Legal Analysis For Why BART's Mobile Phone Shutdown Was Illegal

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2011 @ 11:52pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Hmm. But since this is an opinion piece, and not a court of law, the expression of his opinion -- even if it is stated as an assertion -- does not deprive anybody of due process.

    Please explain that to the voices in your head. They're getting loud enough for the rest of us to hear.

  • On the post: A Legal Analysis For Why BART's Mobile Phone Shutdown Was Illegal

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2011 @ 11:40pm

    Re: Re: Re: No credit for submission?

    I always wanted to be a minion.

  • On the post: Newspaper Claims Satirical Blogger Mentioning Its Name Is Trademark Infringement

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2011 @ 05:13pm

    Did I mention I own a Ford?

    The Ford Motor Company totally sues me every time I mention online that I own a Ford Focus and my last car was a Ford Taurus.

    Worse yet, there are pictures in my gallery and they totally sued me for putting up pictures AND for having "Focus" in the URL.

    They also totally sue Carmax every time they put a Ford up for sale on their website because it dilutes the trademark; people might think they're buying their used cars from Ford! So when I bought my redacted from redacted they couldn't actually tell me what I was buying. Because, you know, they'd totally get sued. I can't even tell you who I bought it from because they'll sue for trademark infringement if I mention I bought it at Carmax. Oops.

    You don't even want to hear about GM and Chrysler.

    P.S. This was totally a parody.

  • On the post: Why Are We Letting An Obsolete Gatekeeper Drive The Debate On Anything?

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2011 @ 03:42pm

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

    I'm thinking of a story of an ancient, immortal race of beings (aliens far out in space from us) who created a corps of varied abilities and shapes, but with a common strong will of mind. They gave each member of the corps a device to wear that distilled and concentrated this power of will. Not magic, merely technology far advanced beyond our own.

    Any comic fan or recent movie-goer will doubtless recognize this description of the Green Lantern, yes?

    No. I was talking about the Lensmen series written by E. E. "Doc" Smith back in the '30s and '40s, some of the earliest space opera (and origin of a lot of science fiction ideas that have been copied so often they're now terribly clich?).

    Seems to me that Warner has just done a movie that's a story that's been recycled twice.

    This is the kind of "originality" we've been legislating protection for, that copyright apologists insist must be protected from other people "stealing" them.



    For the record, this similarity has been noted in Wikipedia, and apparently the originators of the Green Lantern deny having read the Lensman books. It's possible they were influenced indirectly, or that they really thought it up independently. Any science fiction aficionado (or anybody who reads, or pays attention to what happens in real life!) is going to pick up a lot of ideas either way. While this does mean part of my argument could be technically incorrect, it doesn't really invalidate it. In fact, the fact that they may have been influenced indirectly makes it stronger -- such ideas become part of the culture that storytellers build on. Come to that, it's quite possible that Edward Smith found his inspiration in the same or similar places as Schwartz and Broome.

    If this had happened this decade, under the current laws and litigious culture, would Edward Elmer Smith have sued DC Comics... and won? In spite of the fact that they apparently didn't actually copy the basic elements of his story, but came up with them independently?

  • On the post: Why Are We Letting An Obsolete Gatekeeper Drive The Debate On Anything?

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2011 @ 02:51pm

    Re: Re:

    That's odd. All I hear is "Whine! Whine! Whine! Whine! Whine! Whine! Whine!"

    ;)

  • On the post: Author Says eBooks Will Hurt Authors Because Of Royalty Rates

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2011 @ 02:34pm

    Re: Never buying an EBOOK KRAP

    Bully for you, but not everybody is a speculator. Some of us are interested in reading the content, not just in the resale value. Or in showing off.

    Your view appears to be somewhat egocentric -- e-books may be useless to you, but that doesn't mean they're useless to everybody.

  • On the post: Author Says eBooks Will Hurt Authors Because Of Royalty Rates

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2011 @ 02:29pm

    "...the single most difficult aspect of getting his or her work to the reader: the physical production of the printed book."

    Also, shelf space issues go away.

    "So, perhaps Swift knows something I don't, but everything I read seems to indicate that eBooks are going to result in options for higher royalties, not lower. So I have to wonder where this fear comes from?"

    Maybe he assumes, as many seem to, that once one electronic copy has been distributed, no more sales will happen. There will be one sale and then everybody will just copy it.

    Of course, if you can ignore one bit of reality, you can ignore all of them.

  • On the post: Australian Government Considering Three Strikes; Consumers Not Considered Stakeholders

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2011 @ 08:56pm

    Don't be silly

    There are no consumers. There are only pirates, and their opinions don't count.

  • On the post: Tech Titans Shift And Change: Worrying About Dominance Is A Fool's Game

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2011 @ 02:24pm

    Entropy Just Isn't What It Used To Be

    I remember when AT&T ran virtually all the phones in the US, and IBM a.k.a. "Big Blue" dominated the computer industry. They're why even today the systems are ancestors of the IBM PC -- big business didn't take the personal computer seriously until IBM made one. Unfortunately it was a mediocre design at best. There were better machines available already, but none had the IBM name behind them. They were all swept away, with one exception that I can think of. But mediocre as it was, it was a standard that people could build to.

    Of course there were scuffles over patents and copyrights and what constituted an IBM clone vs. what constituted IP violation. These days there's no way it would have happened. IBM would simply sue everybody in sight who tried to make a clone, the courts would back them up, and the market would continue to be fragmented for at least another decade.

    Nobody at the time could imagine IBM losing dominance, they were so powerful. And yet... here we are.

  • On the post: Will John Sununu And Harold Ford Jr. Agree To Pay Netflix's Broadband Bill Next Month?

    Jeffrey Nonken ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2011 @ 12:46pm

    Free rides

    By not paying for the roads, Ford Motor Company gets a free ride every time I drive my car.

    By not paying for the wires, poles and meters, GE gets a free ride every time I turn on a light.

    Eljer gets two free rides every time I flush the toilet. Bonus! Of course after trying to digest stuff like this it tends to get clogged. More free rides! Ace Hardware gets free rides too, they sold me the plunger.

    How much you want to bet John Sununu and Harold Ford Jr. never have to flush?

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