Jon Renaut 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (195)

• On the post: Showtime, HBO Working With ISPs To Make Their Streaming Services Cap Exempt

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2015 @ 10:59am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not sure I oppose zero rating

  It costs time and money to invest in infrastructure, so that is an actual limit on the supply of bandwidth.
  
  It always comes back to the point that Mike Masnick has made a million times - if there was real broadband competition, most of these problems would take care of themselves.

• On the post: Showtime, HBO Working With ISPs To Make Their Streaming Services Cap Exempt

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2015 @ 10:39am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not sure I oppose zero rating

  It's two different metrics, but at the same time, those who use a lot over time are more likely to be using it at any given moment, so the two are definitely related. And bandwidth isn't infinite, so I wouldn't call it artificial scarcity. It may only be scarce because of ISP's unwillingness to invest enough in infrastructure, but that's still actual scarcity.

• On the post: Showtime, HBO Working With ISPs To Make Their Streaming Services Cap Exempt

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2015 @ 10:16am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Not sure I oppose zero rating

  Startups, nonprofits, and small ventures are always at a disadvantage in terms of marketing and other treatment. They have less to offer in terms of money or name-recognition or any number of things, so they have less bargaining power and won't be able to get deals like the big players can.
  
  While I don't like the effect this could have on the VC market, I don't think that banning zero rating deals is the right way to deal with it.

• On the post: Showtime, HBO Working With ISPs To Make Their Streaming Services Cap Exempt

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2015 @ 10:08am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Not sure I oppose zero rating

  Ah, ok, I guess I need to actually read the rules.

• On the post: Showtime, HBO Working With ISPs To Make Their Streaming Services Cap Exempt

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2015 @ 10:06am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Not sure I oppose zero rating

  Sure, but aren't heavy users of nearly every service that isn't billed per unit subsidized by lighter users? It's cheaper for both partners to do it this way rather than discount the service. So, while I don't get warm-and-fuzzies from the idea, either, I have a hard time faulting the companies for doing the deal this way.

• On the post: Showtime, HBO Working With ISPs To Make Their Streaming Services Cap Exempt

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2015 @ 08:18am

  Re: Re: Not sure I oppose zero rating

  But aren't the rules in place now explicit about not degrading service?
  
  I don't really love the idea of zero rating, though as others have mentioned, I'd like to see the caps go away and make this moot rather than forbid zero rating. But I don't really understand why you think it's slimy?

• On the post: Showtime, HBO Working With ISPs To Make Their Streaming Services Cap Exempt

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2015 @ 07:35am

  Not sure I oppose zero rating

  How is zero rating really different from, for example, my ISP offering me discounted subscriptions to Hulu+ or HBO's streaming service? In both instances, the ISP is telling me, "If you use our service and the service of our preferred partner, you get a discount".
  
  And of course this gives an advantage to the bigger partners because they're the ones that people want to sign up with. But it's always going to be easier when you're the big, successful company. We aren't trying to take away the advantages of being successful.
  
  I'm not saying to let them do whatever they want, because clearly there is a line where a business partnership becomes collusion. I don't know where that line is, but I think a simple zero rating deal falls well into the business partnership side.

• On the post: Lenovo In Denial: Insists There's No Security Problem With Superfish — Which Is Very, Very Wrong.

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 19 Feb, 2015 @ 11:26am

  Hooray Websense for a change

  I tried to check out Superfish's home page to see if they'd made a statement and Websense blocked it as "Potentially Unwanted Software".

• On the post: Islamic Extremists Use YouTube's Automated Copyright Dispute Process To Access Critics' Personal Data

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2014 @ 09:27am

  Copyright infringement and terrorism

  They keep telling us that copyright infringement helps terrorists and now look - sure enough, the laws we made them pass to stop infringement are finally doing it.

• On the post: MPAA And Movie Theaters Issue A Complete Ban On Google Glass, Because They 'Have A Long History Of Welcoming Tech Advances'

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2014 @ 06:36am

  Re:

  I know, and now that I know there won't be cam movies, I am totally going to rush right out and see the latest blockbuster prequel to a reboot of a two year old movie "based" on a comic book. I can almost taste the $17 stale popcorn right now!

• On the post: DC Councilman Leaves Cab Union Rep's Business Card In His Stack Of Anti-Uber Amendments

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 29 Oct, 2014 @ 08:54am

  He's a lame duck

  Jim Graham is my councilmember and he's already lost the primary, so he's on his way out. This is not the first time he has seemed to be a bit fuzzy on ethical issues, but nothing concrete has ever been found.
  
  And while I have no excuse for Marion Barry - it's a huge embarrassment to many DC residents that he's still holding elected office - I have to mention that a lot of DC politics is at the mercy of the federal government, where we have no meaningful representation.
  
  Finally, the real solution here is not more regulation for Uber and Lyft, but LESS for the incumbent cabs who don't want to compete. The DC Taxi Commission is the real problem. For example, they forced all cabs to take credit cards, which is a benefit for riders, but limited it to a small number of card processors, many of who didn't pay the drivers in a reasonable amount of time (if at all).

• On the post: US Solicitor General, Don Verrilli, Tells Supreme Court That Of Course You Can Infringe On An Invalid Patent

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2014 @ 11:59am

  Re: Re:

  Unfortunately, they probably ARE. I'm not sure whether patent invalidations are retroactive?
  
  The real solution is to stop approving patents on garbage, but that seems unlikely to happen.

• On the post: US Solicitor General, Don Verrilli, Tells Supreme Court That Of Course You Can Infringe On An Invalid Patent

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2014 @ 11:57am

  Re: which is why

  I don't know that you can make that automatic - it's too easy to file a lawsuit, and you could end up triggering an awful lot of useless work.
  
  Maybe someone being sued over a patent could request some time to review it and then challenge the validity before the actual trial starts?

• On the post: US Solicitor General, Don Verrilli, Tells Supreme Court That Of Course You Can Infringe On An Invalid Patent

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 27 Oct, 2014 @ 09:36am

  Once a patent is ruled invalid, it's not really a patent anymore, so you shouldn't be able to infringe. However, until that point, even if you're really really really sure it's going to be invalidated, you have to take it as valid.

• On the post: Keith Alexander Continues To 'Play To The Edges' Of Propriety; NSA Now Checking Out His Partnership With Agency CTO

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2014 @ 06:21am

  This is insane

  As I was graduating college, I was planning to go into defense contracting after hearing stories of riches heaped on older classmates by Raytheon and Lockheed. My girlfriend at the time was going to work at the NSA. After her first orientation, she freaked out that I could no longer take her out to dinner or anything because it would be a conflict of interest.
  
  We were entry-level new college grads who in no way could influence any sort of contract award or anything like that, and she was told this wasn't appropriate. To think that the former head of the agency employing the current CTO would be "manageable" shows, once again, that the NSA is completely divorced from reality.

• On the post: Guy Claims Patent On Photographing People In Races And Then Selling Them Their Photos; Sues Photography Company

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2014 @ 06:59pm

  Re: Re: Prior art

  I'M SUING YOU, YOU JERK

• On the post: Guy Claims Patent On Photographing People In Races And Then Selling Them Their Photos; Sues Photography Company

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 22 Aug, 2014 @ 01:14pm

  Prior art

  In college around 1999 I worked for my friend's dad doing exactly this, primarily at motorcycle races. This was before it was feasible for the average person to it on a computer, but it's been established you can't take something obvious and add "on a computer" and get a patent. I have no idea when he started the business, but he'd been doing it a while before I started.

• On the post: Report: All But Four Of The High-Profile Domestic Terrorism Plots In The Last Decade Were Crafted From The Ground Up By The FBI

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2014 @ 09:22am

  Re:

  Ahh, sorry, never mind, I misread it at first. Carry on.

• On the post: Report: All But Four Of The High-Profile Domestic Terrorism Plots In The Last Decade Were Crafted From The Ground Up By The FBI

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 23 Jul, 2014 @ 09:20am

  Dude, stop mixing your soccer metaphors. An own-goal and a goal on an empty net aren't the same thing.

• On the post: More Than Half Of All People Want To Ditch Their Cable Provider, If Only They Could

  

  Jon Renaut ( profile ), 10 Jun, 2014 @ 10:25am

  Re: Re: Re: sounds like a Comcast-sponsored study

  Ah, ok, that makes more sense.
  
  I was on the phone with Verizon last night talking about FIOS service at a house where I'm one of the property managers and they were similarly clueless, though not that pushy. She didn't even flinch when I told her I was going to cancel service completely after they lied about what my bill would be.
  
  Even where there is competition (I can switch to Comcast there), no one seems to have any incentive to compete.

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