Jon Reeves 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (67)

• On the post: How Linus Torvalds Invented Today's Work From Home Paradigm In 1991

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 15 Oct, 2020 @ 09:04am

  So, is Richard Stallman chopped liver?

  Let's not forget that, while Linus was responsible for the kernel, some 90% of the codebase of the GNU/Linux system predates him, dating back as far as 1983 (though it's less clear when it became a work-from-home project).

  Now if you want to credit Linus for Git/Github, that's a different story, and probably the one you should have written.

• On the post: Estate Of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Alleges Copyright Infringement Over Sherlock's Emotional Awakening

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 09 Jul, 2020 @ 09:16pm

  Re: Re: 10+ years ago

  Good point -- though it wasn't really briefed. If they had mentioned that they only just discovered the books (and why), it might be more compelling; otherwise, it just seems like they have been poor stewards of their copyright. And you've now given some hint of why this was filed in New Mexico.

• On the post: Estate Of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Alleges Copyright Infringement Over Sherlock's Emotional Awakening

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 09 Jul, 2020 @ 05:52pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  There's a long road between initial filing and trial. As I suggest below, there's also an excellent chance this case will get thrown out long before witnesses or a jury are needed.

• On the post: Estate Of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Alleges Copyright Infringement Over Sherlock's Emotional Awakening

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 09 Jul, 2020 @ 12:49pm

  10+ years ago

  According to the complaint, the books were written in 2006-2010. That would seem to be outside the statute of limitations for bringing a claim.

• On the post: Estate Of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Alleges Copyright Infringement Over Sherlock's Emotional Awakening

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 09 Jul, 2020 @ 09:54am

  Venue shopping?

  Why TF was this filed in New Mexico? The author of the original novels lives in Florida, the companies are incorporated or based in Delaware, New York, or California, the film production company is in Georgia, and a couple of other defendants are British. I expect it to get tossed on venue alone. The only people in New Mexico are the lawyers.

  And then, on top of it all, as others have pointed out, the film itself could be argued to depend only on those stories that have (now) fallen out of copyright. The original novels could be another story, but given that they were published from 2006-2010, it would seem there's a statute of limitations issue. They're playing some kind of silly statutory limitation handwave to try to artificially add three years to the copyright term to rope in the four 1923-24 stories.

  That's before you even get into the weakness of the primary argument, which was the focus of Tim's article. Oh, and the fact that they mention "precedent" but cite no cases.

  I am not a lawyer, but I can't believe 3 lawyers signed off on this.

• On the post: Parler Speedruns The Content Moderation Learning Curve; Goes From 'We Allow Everything' To 'We're The Good Censors' In Days

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 01 Jul, 2020 @ 01:39pm

  OK, what "official" rule does this break?

  https://twitter.com/DevinCow/status/1278092655914659840

  Unless the rule is "we don't like it" -- which as Mike points out, is valid, but hypocritical. Heck, they aren't even making fun of Parler.

• On the post: City Of Dallas Shuts Down Business Of Man Who Called Cops Over 100 Times In 20 Months To Deal With Criminals Near His Car Wash

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2020 @ 10:46pm

  It's even worse...

  OK, I skimmed through some of the archived stories about the car wash, and the city looks even worse. According to those stories, the owner, apparently recognizing that Dallas PD wasn't going to do the job he needed, formed a PID (an association of local businesses) to collect extra taxes for security and trash pickup. There were some such services for a time, but they stopped (but the taxes did not).

• On the post: City Of Dallas Shuts Down Business Of Man Who Called Cops Over 100 Times In 20 Months To Deal With Criminals Near His Car Wash

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 17 Jan, 2020 @ 09:30pm

  414 pages = 130 calls

  Headline is incorrect; as the article states, it's 414 pages of calls, not 414 calls. By my count, there were 130 calls, as each call takes 2 to 6 pages (most are in the 3-4 page range; average is about 3.2 pages). Still an awful lot of calls, but let's be accurate here.

• On the post: Canadian Brewery Changes Name Of Brew Due To Peanut Butter Company Bully That Doesn't Ship In Canada

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2019 @ 12:32am

  Not as weak as some similar stories...

  I'm going to give Skippy half a point here, because unlike some of the other trademark stories that have been covered here, there is actually peanut butter used in the beer, and someone could theoretically think, given the name, that the peanut butter used is Skippy -- similar to how Oreo has licensed their trademark for candy bars and pudding. However, the "not currently sold in Canada" aspect does still make this a trademark bully situation. Plus, the graphic design, if you can call it that (a simple black-on-white block lettered label) in no way resembles the peanut butter (yes, I watched the linked video to find that out -- along with the new name, "Illuminutti").

• On the post: Enough With The Myth That Big Tech Is 'Censoring' Conservatives AND That The Law Requires Them To Be Neutral

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 02 Aug, 2019 @ 08:20pm

  Link

  I didn't see a link to the WaPo OpEd in the article, so here it is.

• On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 31 May, 2019 @ 02:18pm

  Re: Actual comment

  Which, I would note, is 100% accurate: Someone did say that.

• On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 31 May, 2019 @ 04:14am

  Oh my FSM, it gets better...

  I just got curious enough to go look on Reddit, and it turns out that DiggDejected didn't even make the original comment; they just posted a link/summary to that comment. The original comment was made by a deleted user, in an apparently deleted thread, but apparently when there's a direct link like this, it's still visible.

  Oh, and not surprisingly, when I Googled the company's URL, the Reddit comments didn't show up until page 5 of the results, not in the first 2 pages, after their own spam comment on the blog of a California church on page 4. Does it surprise anyone that the plaintiffs are apparently also spammers?

• On the post: Libel Lawsuit Has A Bunch Of Crazy Ideas About How Section 230 Immunity Works

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 30 May, 2019 @ 03:35pm

  Pure gold

  Tim barely scratched the surface of the crazy here (and yes, it's pro se). Sample quote: "Wikipedia, long held to be the definite, accepted, science-based, 'Correct' answer for almost everything known..." This being a lead-in to a section trying to assert that changing ads daily amounts to daily republication, thus skirting the statute of limitations.

  I swear, if you were trying to write a parody of pro se Internet lawsuits, you couldn't top this.

• On the post: Our Legal Dispute With Shiva Ayyadurai Is Now Over

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 17 May, 2019 @ 01:29pm

  Re: Why no anti-SLAPP award?

  Look at the previous article linked -- it was mostly a procedural question. The suit was brought in Massachusetts (no or weak SLAPP) and Techdirt thought California SLAPP should apply because that's the state they are located in. As the previous article pointed out, this is why a strong Federal anti-SLAPP law is needed.

• On the post: Judge Cock(y)blocks Author Faleena Hopkins' Demand Other Authors Stop Using The Word 'Cocky' In Their Titles

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2019 @ 04:25pm

  Settled!

  Just came back to this and discovered that Hopkins backed down. If you click on the USPTO link in the article you'll see that the author has surrendered the trademark on Cocky; a quick search turns up, among others, this article confirming an amicable settlement. (Or, somewhat more comprehensive, but much more annoyingly formatted, this article.)

  Hopkins has an official statement video which kind of shows that she doesn't really get why she came under attack.

• On the post: Judge Cock(y)blocks Author Faleena Hopkins' Demand Other Authors Stop Using The Word 'Cocky' In Their Titles

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2018 @ 03:39pm

  This show will last a long time...

  The schedule going forward is ... leisurely, would be a good word:
  
  Time to Answer 6/23/2018
  ...
  Plaintiff's Pretrial Disclosures Due 3/5/2019
  ...
  Request for Oral Hearing (optional) Due 11/25/2019
  
  And then, presumably, the hearing itself would come some time in 2020. This could be more protracted than the monkey selfie case, unless someone comes to their senses in the meantime.

• On the post: Police Use Genealogy Site To Locate Murder Suspect They'd Been Hunting For More Than 30 Years

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 01 May, 2018 @ 03:47pm

  Re: Re: Re:

  It's actually much, much better than 99.9%. It depends in part on how rare the various markers are, but the average accuracy is better than 1 in a billion (this document is over 10 years old, so it's probably better now) and, according to the FBI, up to 1 in 108 trillion (and in one case, purportedly 1 in 930 sextillion).

• On the post: Police Use Genealogy Site To Locate Murder Suspect They'd Been Hunting For More Than 30 Years

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 01 May, 2018 @ 03:30pm

  Re: Re: Re:

  Except that's not how it worked. After they had a suspect from a familial match and other factors, they collected DNA from the suspect (surreptitiously, using a discarded item -- perfectly legal whether they had a warrant or not, since once your trash is on the curb it's fair game) to get a full DNA profile/match. Only after they had that did they make an arrest.

• On the post: No, The Wall St. Bull Sculptor Doesn't 'Have A Point'

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2017 @ 11:34am

  Compare to architecture

  To see how ridiculous the artist's argument is, envision the Charging Bull as a building. By his argument, if I were to build another building nearby, I'd be infringing on his copyright. But in architecture, it's almost expected that a well-designed building will "comment" on nearby buildings. Sometimes this means echoing elements, sometimes it even means a playful parody of some aspects of the existing building.

• On the post: Awesome Stuff: Masnick's Office In A Bag

  

  Jon Reeves ( profile ), 04 Jun, 2016 @ 02:54pm

  Grr, can't edit/delete, and didn't preview. Here is a proper link.

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