madasahatter 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: AP's Attempt At DRM'ing The News Shuts Down

    madasahatter ( profile ), 17 May, 2013 @ 06:07pm

    Am I not surprised

    A model not based on news aggregators should be encouraged because page views and click throughs can only happen when some visits the site.

    The dinosaurs do not get the point of encouraging links to their content generates visits and eventually ad revenue.

  • On the post: Indian Publishing Firm Can't Take A Little Criticism, Threatens Blogger With $1 Billion Lawsuit, Criminal Charges

    madasahatter ( profile ), 17 May, 2013 @ 02:51pm

    Streisand Effect

    Do shyster Kumar and OMICS know about the Streisand Effect? I never heard of either OMICS or Scholarly Open Access until recently becuase of shyster Kumar.

  • On the post: Appeal Over Former RIAA Lobbyist Judge Allowing Prenda To Get Info On Over 1,000 John Does Moves Forward

    madasahatter ( profile ), 16 May, 2013 @ 11:01am

    Impeachment

    Maybe an impeachment hearing will knock some sense into Shyster Howell.

  • On the post: Police Follow Up Beating A 'Possibly Intoxicated' Man To Death By Seizing Witnesses' Cell Phones

    madasahatter ( profile ), 13 May, 2013 @ 02:30pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: No Tazers?

    Dead is still dead: beaten or electrocuted.

  • On the post: Police Follow Up Beating A 'Possibly Intoxicated' Man To Death By Seizing Witnesses' Cell Phones

    madasahatter ( profile ), 13 May, 2013 @ 02:27pm

    Re: Re:

    Excessive police violence without porportionate charges and convictions will lead to more violence.

    What is puzzling is why the police did not just copy the video off the phones or even ask to have it emailed to someone. The technology readily exists. Of course this assumes the Kern County Gestapo is interested in justice and not covering up murder.

  • On the post: Politicians, Car Dealers Trying To Make It Illegal To Buy A Tesla In North Carolina

    madasahatter ( profile ), 13 May, 2013 @ 02:00pm

    Re: Re: Re: Republican obstructionism denies inovative products to its citizens

    All electric cars (not hybrids) suffer from the same technical problem of recharging time vs range. The recharging time of the battery limits the usefulness of electric cars to short distance trips with the lengthy recharging in between. Recharging times are often several hours. Tesla has managed to increase the range by having larger batteries installed.

    This technical problem has existed since the Brass Era (1890 - 1920) and is caused by the nature of rechargeable batteries.

    Steam (some Brass Era cars where steamers) and internal combustion engines can use liquid fuels. The refueling time, thus, is only a few minutes. The effective range of the vehicle is determined by the physical limits of the driver.

    For example, some Tesla models have a range of about 250 miles with a recharging time of several hours. Your typical IC powered vehicle has a range of about 350 miles but more importantly a refueling time of about 10 minutes. The IC powered vehicle has effective range of 2 - 3 times that of a Tesla.

    Also, it is debatable if electric vehicles are overall better for the environment. They are not emissionless, just the emissions occur at a different location and in the production of the battery.

  • On the post: MPAA Freaks Out: Insists That Having To Consider Fair Use Before Filing A DMCA Takedown Would Be Crazy

    madasahatter ( profile ), 13 May, 2013 @ 09:04am

    Fair Use

    Since several uses are by law are not copyright infringement sending a valid DMCA notice should require a human review. I suspect most flagged possible infringement is likely geniune infringement under the law and as Mike noted some will be a judgement call either way.

    The MPAA does not want to spend the money required to properly follow the law. They can not totally rely on automated tools to flag infringement since many exempt uses are difficult for automated processes to determine.

  • On the post: Judge Says Giving Up Your Password May Be A 5th Amendment Violation

    madasahatter ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2013 @ 09:34pm

    Re: UK

    The 5th Amendment is a US idea to limit the ability of the police to go on fishing expeditions and to compel one to answer any questions. It was added in the Bill of Rights partly because of the American experience with British justice in the Colonial period was not to pretty.

  • On the post: Judge Says Giving Up Your Password May Be A 5th Amendment Violation

    madasahatter ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2013 @ 09:31pm

    Re: Search Warrant

    Not quite, the warrant allows for gathering for later analysis of potential evidence. There is nothing stopping someone from trying to crack the encryption other than time. The argument can be made if the police have the hard drive they can try breaking the encryption and demanding the password is self-incrimination.

  • On the post: Judge Says Giving Up Your Password May Be A 5th Amendment Violation

    madasahatter ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2013 @ 09:27pm

    Re: Re:

    If they have proof one has child porn, such as photos in the person's possession then they do not need anything from the hard drive. At any rate the 5th Amendment still stands and the police are still on a fishing expedition.

    I hope the police are smart enough to use hash tags and not just the file name. One could rename a picture of a dog or cat to something sounding like child porn as bait.

  • On the post: CipherCloud Discovers Senorita Streisand Effect Is A Hateful Mistress

    madasahatter ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2013 @ 09:45pm

    What Defamation

    The cryptographers are curious about the encryption method and based on the published information they concluded by consensus a particular method was likely being used. The best reaction is not to sue but to publish enough information about the cryptography methods to keep the crypto-spooks happy.

    If I was researching the company and saw this Q&A I would likely read and research more about the techniques mentioned. My interest is not the details of the specific algorithm but what method(s) are they using and what the crypto-spooks think of it.

  • On the post: Appeals Court Overturns Richard Prince Ruling In Victory For Fair Use & Appropriation Art

    madasahatter ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2013 @ 02:24pm

    Overall Sounds Good

    Fair use is not easy to define precisely but the Appeals Court got the basics correct. Is the work in question a straight copy or does it have its own expressive merit that stands as separate (derivative) work. And they noted that copyright exists to promote arts and sciences so one should lean towards a broad definition of fair use.

  • On the post: Thought Prenda Was Dead? No, It's Up To Its Old Tricks… And More

    madasahatter ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2013 @ 02:13pm

    May Be a Big Mistake

    What would happen if someone who was aware of Prenda's antics got a demand letter from this batch? I would think telling one's lawyer about the problems Prenda is having in two different federal courts would mess up the works. Also, they are suing in state court and it is very likely most of the letters are going out of state (jurisdiction). One of the defendants could challenge the court's jurisdiction - probably get it moved to the defendant's local federal district court.

  • On the post: US Marine Corp. Provides Music In Response To FOIA Request, But Warns That Publishing It May Infringe On Copyrights

    madasahatter ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2013 @ 01:49pm

    An Interesting Quirk

    The Marine Corps Band recording is public domain but the actual music played is not necessarily public domain. The warning is proper and reasonable; make sure you have the proper permissions before posting for the music.

    I wonder how many people fail to realized there are often multiple copyrights on a performance.

  • On the post: Bureau Of Economic Analysis Shows Why Copyright Terms Should Be Greatly Diminished

    madasahatter ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2013 @ 11:37am

    Re: Interesting, but is it still relevant?

    I think data reveals that many works would likely lapse into public domain if you had a system were the term was about 15 years with possibly one renewal for about 10 years. They would naturally lapse because the work was not selling enough to justify getting an extension.

    The data indicates most copyrighted have the majority of their sales within about 5 years of release and taper off. If after about 10 years 99%+ of all the sales have been made I can not justify having copyrights longer than about 15 years. A few works do continue to sell well and thus the extension. Also, remember there are very few works that are really multi-generational that continue to sell well for lengthy periods.

    An interesting exercise is to pick a year, say 1995, and ask if you know the top ten books, movies, TV shows, songs, etc. in popular culture. Without Google, I suspect most will only name a few, if any. Next question, are any of these works something you want to buy today. Again, for most, I suspect the answer is no.

  • On the post: Bureau Of Economic Analysis Shows Why Copyright Terms Should Be Greatly Diminished

    madasahatter ( profile ), 24 Apr, 2013 @ 08:22am

    Sales curves

    I have often wondered what the actual sales curves were. I suspected they were skewed towards the initial release with relatively high sales volumes in the first few years and reaching about 99% of all sales within about 5 to 10 years and virtually 100% of all sales within about 10 to 15 years.

    If my suspicion is correct then a fair copyright period is probably 20 - 25 years maximum with no renewal.

    Remaindering in the book trade was common years ago for publishers to clear out their back stock. You could buy a new hardback book for $1.00 when they sold for $15-$20 at retail.

  • On the post: Why The DOJ's Decision To Not Read Dzhokhar Tsarnaev His Miranda Rights Is A Terrible Idea

    madasahatter ( profile ), 22 Apr, 2013 @ 08:02am

    MIranda

    First, Miranda says that for a police interview to be used as evidence the suspect must be read his rights before the interview. It can literally happen when the detective sits down to do the interview. There is no timeline that says the defendant must be read his rights at arrest only before the interview. See Orin Kerr at Volokh.com for a good discussion.

    It was never stated why they did not read Miranda yet. But noting the above and the possibility that Tsarnaev was not able to communicate with the police too much has been read into the timing of any reading of the Miranda warning.

    The problem is most US TV shows act as if Miranda must be read at arrest which is incorrect; it must occur at some time before the interview commences.

  • On the post: Prenda Now In Trouble In Another Case In California

    madasahatter ( profile ), 19 Apr, 2013 @ 08:26pm

    CCleaner and Similar App Capabilities

    Many people have apps to remove digital litter cluttering their computers. The default settings on many of these apps is to clean up the registry, delete temp files, clean the temp folder, clean the recycle bin, and similar activities. Some can securely delete files on demand. However the existence of such an app does not mean it was ever used to do this.

    Duffy is trying to BS Judge Chen and Judge Chen smells the turd pile.

  • On the post: 'Intellectual Bulwark' Of Austerity Economics Collapses Because Of Three Major Errors

    madasahatter ( profile ), 18 Apr, 2013 @ 08:18am

    Economics is not science

    Science relies on the falsification and testing of hypotheses based on observations. The Higgs Boson existence is a prediction of one model of subatomic particles. If it is proven to exist or if the model is invalidated by new observations then a new or heavily revised model must be developed. The problem with economics is that "testing" economic "theories" involves potentially destroying national (at a minimum) economies and attendant social costs.

    Economists fool themselves by the fact they have unverified mathematical models which look impressive but are "garbage-in, garbage-out".

    History indicates that no country can not continue indefinitely to have spending deficits without severe economic consequences occurring. The exact policy decisions and circumstances will determine the precise consequences. The problem is determining how and when these consequences will occur. I am not making a true scientific argument but one based on seeing similar patterns occur throughout history and noting the eventual results.

    If the dismal science were a true science it would predict the consequences of policies with a high degree of mathematical precision.

  • On the post: Documentary On The History Of Apple And Microsoft Show It Was All About Copying, Not Patents

    madasahatter ( profile ), 13 Apr, 2013 @ 10:45am

    Languishing Ideas

    XEROX did successfully market their own GUI ideas. They languished around for several years (~10) until Apple commercialized them at for a fee. One should wonder how many great ideas are languishing in some corporate lab because the PHB (aka mismanagment) does not and refuses to understand the ideas and thinks the ideas are stupid.

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