John85851’s Techdirt Profile

On the post: Not The Onion: Morocco Bans Sharing Newspapers To Protect Publisher Business Models

John85851 ( profile ), 13 Jun, 2016 @ 10:31am

They're losing revenue... potential revenue, that is

How many people will pick up the free newspaper, read an article, and appreciate the writers or news or comics? Okay, sure, the newspaper is in the business to make money, not educate readers, but there's no way to measure how many people will see something in the newspaper and buy something else because of it.

How much advertising reaches people because of free newspapers? Okay, granted, that doesn't help the newspapers' subscription rates, but it should help their advertising rates. How much more could the paper get for each ad if they could tell companies that a single copy of the paper reaches 5 or 6 people in a cafe?
That also sounds like a good way to cut down on the cost of printing.

On the post: Pure Bullshit: AMC Threatens Huge Fan Community With Copyright Claim Over 'Spoiler' Predictions

John85851 ( profile ), 13 Jun, 2016 @ 10:07am

It's all about control

As usual for studios, it's all about control, as in:
They want to control the marketing for the upcoming storylines and what information gets released when. If anyone tries to guess or make predictions and take away from their marketing, then they'll threaten to sue. Sure, they know they're on shaky legal ground and it wouldn't hold up in court, but they know it costs money to defend, so they have no to reason not to file a takedown notice.
(Plus, since there's no punishment for a wrongful takedown notice, there's even less reason not to send one.)

On the post: Newspaper Association Thinks FTC Should Force Readers To Be Subject To Godawful Ads And Invasive Trackers

John85851 ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2016 @ 10:17am

Re: Our unchanging business models need you!

That's a good analogy, but keep going:

* Whenever you change a channel, you get ads that border on fraud, such as "10 Crazy Things Obama Won't Tell Homeowners About Their Mortgage".
* Whenever you change a channel, half of it will be covered by a pop-up ad until you close it.
* Whenever you change a channel, a video will play in the upper corner, drowning out the show you want to watch.
* When you change the channel, the show will start playing, but then start and stop as ads are loaded. Or the show will stop completely because it can't connect to the ad-server.
* When you change the channel, your TV is infected with malware and won't work until you take it be repaired, yet the TV channel claims no responsibility. (My favorite!)

On the post: Homeowner Sues Police After Pursuit Of Shoplifter Leaves Him With No Home To Own

John85851 ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2016 @ 10:31am

Where are the good cops

When I read stories like this, people are usually quick to point out that the events happened because of "bad cops" or "overzealous cops".

So where are the "good cops"? Did not one single person think it was a bad idea to destroy the house like this? Did no one speak up to say there should be another way of handling the situation? Were they all "following orders" to get the suspect at any cost?

On the post: New York Times Says Fair Use Of 300 Words Will Run You About $1800

John85851 ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2016 @ 10:21am

Maybe the NYT needs the money

After all the talk about ad-blockers, maybe the NYT needs to charge these fees to cover the income they're losing on their website.

On the post: Latest Absurd Moral Panic: Parents Complain Amazon Echo Is Creating Rude Children

John85851 ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2016 @ 10:08am

What is "turn it off"?

What is this phrase "turn it off" you speak of?

Since the early days of TV (or even radio), some parents would rather petition the government to "do something" rather than just turn the computer or TV or radio off.
If you don't want your kids listening to it, then turn it off, but don't make everyone else suffer for your lack of parenting.

The second issue is this: I would argue that the Amazon Echo is actually doing a good job with kids. Children should know not to be rude to their parents or adults so they're playing with the Echo to see what happens.
And if parents think the kids will learn more about manners from the Echo than from mom and dad, then there's a much bigger problem, called "responsible parenting".

On the post: Oklahoma Cops Debut Tool That Allows Them To Drain Pre-Paid Cards During Traffic Stops

John85851 ( profile ), 09 Jun, 2016 @ 10:18am

What does ERAD think about this?

Does ERAD care about how clients use their technology?
Do they care that LEO's are seizing money without due process? It's one thing to seize someone's money after they've been accused and arrested for a crime, but it's a completely different matter when the police take the money simply because it's there.

And it's yet another thing when ERAD takes a percentage of every seizure. So again, so they know the money is coming from innocent people?

On the post: Another Entity Thinks A Random Bundle Of URLs Is A Legitimate DMCA Takedown Request

John85851 ( profile ), 08 Jun, 2016 @ 01:08pm

Take down IMDB

It would be funny if IMDB complied with the takedown request and replaced the movie's page with a big message that said "Information removed due to Copyright Universal".
How long do you think it would take the cast and crew and owners of the movie to rip apart Copyright Universal for taking down it's page? Then we might start to see some change in the way these bots issue takedown notices.

On the post: Bad Intel And Zero Verification Leads To LifeLock Naming Wrong Company In Suspected Security Breach

John85851 ( profile ), 08 Jun, 2016 @ 10:44am

Not surprising

It's not surprising when companies use other companies as their source of data rather than verifying it themselves.
How many times has this happened in the news industry? Site #1 (such as The Onion) will publish a story and site #2 will take it as gospel and re-print it... even though The Onion is a known satirical site! Then site #3 will re-print site #2's article using site #2 as the "verified source", yet the original data is still bad.

On the post: Jesse Jackson Likens FCC Cable Box Reform Plan To 'Snarling Dogs, Water Hoses And Church Bombings'

John85851 ( profile ), 08 Jun, 2016 @ 10:32am

Buy an HD antennae, ditch the cable box

From his opening paragraph, it almost sounds like Jesse Jackson is arguing against cable set-top boxes:
National news coverage of the snarling dogs, water hoses and church bombings in the American South were the catalysts to exposing the ugly truths of racism and bigotry in the 1960s. Local news outlets gave new meaning to what the struggle looked like for people on its front lines.
To continue:
This is why I'm telling everyone to go to Walmart, pay a one-time fee for an HD antennae, and get all the local channels for free without needing to pay monthly fees for a cable box.

On the post: Appeals Court Doubles Down On Dangerous Ruling: Says Website Can Be Blamed For Failing To Warn Of Rapists

John85851 ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2016 @ 11:58am

Re: Useless warnings

The warnings aren't useless. Sure, users ignore and click-through them, but the real purpose is legal: it's so the site's lawyers can say that the warning was in the TOS that the user agreed to, so the user can't sue.

On the post: Cable Company Admits It Gives Poor Credit Score Customers — Even Worse Customer Service

John85851 ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2016 @ 11:35am

Re: Credit scores can change

A good point, but you lost it with "might of". The phrase is "might have" or "might've". There is no phrase in the English language called "would of", "could of" or "should of".

On the post: Author Sues Publisher For Portraying eBook Licenses As 'Sales' To Pay Out Fewer Royalties

John85851 ( profile ), 02 Jun, 2016 @ 09:46am

Re:

This is a good idea, but I'd be willing to bet that the publisher has a contract where the author has to report all income, exactly so the author can't cut the publisher out of any income.

On the post: Caribou Coffee Learns That Even When You Win As A Trademark Bully, You Can Still Lose

John85851 ( profile ), 02 Jun, 2016 @ 09:38am

An obvious solution

This is probably way too late, but this seems like an obvious solution:
"Blue Caribou Cafe... now proudly serving Caribou Coffee."
The cafe gets to keep its name and the coffee company gets more customers from selling their coffee.

But this solution wouldn't let lawyers file more billable hours with their client.

On the post: AT&T Falsely Blames The FCC For Company's Failure To Block Annoying Robocalls

John85851 ( profile ), 02 Jun, 2016 @ 09:33am

A few things from other discussions about this

First, how are scammer calls blocked but legitimate calls are allowed? By using crowd-sourced software like Nomorobo: people report a phone number as bad and as more people report it, it gets labeled as a spammer and blocked.

Second, I don't know all the technical details, but supposedly all phone calls have internal ID's attached to them so the phone companies know where they come from. It's easy to use software to spoof the phone number that appears on a caller ID, but it's almost impossible to spoof the internal ID.
Would it possible for phone companies block calls using the internal ID's?

On the post: Top Internet Companies Agree To Vague Notice & Takedown Rules For 'Hate Speech' In The EU

John85851 ( profile ), 01 Jun, 2016 @ 08:45am

Criticizing police could be hate speech

Did you see that Louisiana passed a law saying police officers will now be a protected class and will be covered under hate crimes?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2016/05/26/louisianas-blue-lives-matter-bill-just-became-law/

So how long will it be until criticizing police becomes labeled hate speech and removed?
Granted, Louisiana is in the US and we're talking about EU law, but still.

On the post: Yes, A Billionaire Looking To Destroy A Media Organization Through Lawsuits Is A Big Deal Even If You Don't Like The Media Organization

John85851 ( profile ), 26 May, 2016 @ 10:27am

Stories may become too much of a risk

It's interesting that the First Amendment protects the media against government interference, but there's no such protection against self-censorship. How long will be until editors are told to kill stories because the legal department considers it too much of a risk- not from government agents or jail time, but because it'll offend a 0.5%-er who will use his resources to bury the newspaper in legal bills?

Between this and stories about how Republicans (especially Trump) telling people not to believe the media, it'll be lucky if we have any good reporters left in a few years.

On the post: Google To France: No You Don't Get To Censor The Global Internet

John85851 ( profile ), 25 May, 2016 @ 10:16am

Again, what about the other search sites

Every time I read a story about someone fighting Google, I have to ask: what about the other search sites? Is France pressuring Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo the same way? How come no one talks about this? :)

On the post: AT&T's Broadband Caps Go Live This Week And Are The Opening Salvo In An All-Out War On Cord Cutters

John85851 ( profile ), 25 May, 2016 @ 10:00am

How to get outrage

I think a good way to generate more outrage from customers is to put the usage caps into terms they understand. After all, what's 300G or 1T a month?
Explain that it's 20 30-minute shows on Netflix or 10 full-length movies. Then explain that people will get charged fees if they happen to binge-watch a TV show all weekend long. Is watching all 13 episodes of "Fuller House" worth a $30 overage fee?
(Okay, 300G of data may be a lot more than 20 30-minute shows, but you get the idea.)

On the post: Fox In The Henhouse: Uses Someone Else's YouTube Clip In Family Guy, Then Takes Down The Original

John85851 ( profile ), 24 May, 2016 @ 10:48am

Re:

I was just going to say this.
If the argument is between Fox and the person who uploaded the video, doesn't Nintendo have a say in this since it was their video game system that was recorded and uploaded? Maybe they should file a defamation notice since the game's bug could make the game (and their system) look bad.

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