Karl 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Russian 'Pirate' Unofficially Ports Xbox Live Arcade Game To The PC; Moral Conundrums And Fractured English Ensue

    Karl ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2013 @ 10:26pm

    Re: Re: FIrst paragraph admits the real piracy to paying ratio:

    so please, shut the fuck up with your common law bullshit.

    Don't even bother asking. I've already refuted this point, to him directly:
    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130412/16073622693/julie-samuels-favorite-techdirt-posts-week.shtml#c618

    He's obviously not capable of listening to reason. He's just here to recite the same old lies, while believing he's proved something. In other words, he's only interested in making an ass out of himself.

  • On the post: Constitutional Scholar Who Taught Obama Comes Out Against Bradley Manning Trial

    Karl ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2013 @ 11:23pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Whoops. Wrong link, again. The Techdirt analysis of Abrams' argument is here:
    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111111/16242216727/first-amendment-expert-floyd-abrams-admits-sopa-would-censor-protected-speech-thinks-its-okay-collateral-damage.shtml

  • On the post: Constitutional Scholar Who Taught Obama Comes Out Against Bradley Manning Trial

    Karl ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2013 @ 11:19pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Actually it was renown First Amendment scholar (and former Solicitor General) Floyd Abrams who Mike maintained "didn't know what he was talking about".

    I looked at the Techdirt story about Abrams' SOPA analysis, and nowhere in there does he say that Abrams "didn't know what he was talking about."

    On the other hand, he does point this out:

    the MPAA is a client of Abrams, as are various other Hollywood trade groups. He didn't write the letter on his own behalf, but was paid by these groups to write the letter. As such, he's speaking as a paid advocate for them, not as an objective independent observer.

    After that, Mike went into a great amount of detail, showing the lack of merits of Abrams' position. No part of the article involved personal attacks, or the implication that Abrams "didn't know what he was talking about."

    If anyone was saying that Abrams "didn't know what he was talking about," it was Lawrence Tribe, Constitutional scholar, in the article that Mike linked to.

    So, the original A.C. (who is obviously Average Joe) not only got the whole thing completely wrong - but he accused Mike of doing precisely the thing that he, himself, did. After all, he is the one who called any First Amendment concerns about SOPA "FUD," and who actually implied that Tribe was shilling for Google.

    So, let's make his comment accurate:
    I remember when Average Joe attacked Prof. Tribe because he [Tribe] thought SOPA/PROTECT IP violated the First Amendment. What happened to all those personal attacks, Joey? I thought this guy was an idiot since he couldn't match up to your super-awesome understanding of the First Amendment. LOL! ROFLMAO! Classic. Joey thought he understood the doctrine better than Prof. Tribe. That was awesome!

  • On the post: France Ready To Shut Down Hadopi As It's 'Incompatible' With Digital Economy

    Karl ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2013 @ 05:52pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re:

    So why do you support such an outcome?

    Well, that's AJ for you. It doesn't matter if copyright enforcement actually harms copyright holders, so long as their "rights" aren't "violated."

  • On the post: France Ready To Shut Down Hadopi As It's 'Incompatible' With Digital Economy

    Karl ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2013 @ 05:47pm

    Re:

    But then the very article he cites says:

    You omitted the two paragraphs following that quote:

    Yet the French music business remains deeply troubled. SNEP, a French recording company group, said Friday that industry revenue fell by 6.7 percent in the first quarter of the year. More alarmingly, revenue from digital outlets fell by 5.2 percent ? the first quarterly decline ? though the organization said several special factors played a role in this.

    Meanwhile, SNEP said the number of visits to illegal music sites by French Internet users had risen by 7 percent between January 2010 and January 2013, to 10.7 million.

    Nothing dishonest about this. Not at all. You're the most honest person there is!

  • On the post: Crowdfunded Stenographer Denied Press Pass To Cover Transcriptless Bradley Manning Trial

    Karl ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2013 @ 08:13pm

    Assange statement

    I read this story about five minutes after I saw Julian Assange's statement on the trial. It's definitely worth a read:
    http://wikileaks.org/Assange-Statement-on-the-First-Day.html

  • On the post: Once Again, Convenience Trumps Free, As Few People Pirate Arrested Development

    Karl ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2013 @ 01:11pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    ...I've made a huge mistake.

    There was an awesome callback to this at the end of the Maeby episode ("Senoritis").

  • On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    Karl ( profile ), 02 Jun, 2013 @ 03:00pm

    Re:

    How was it a stupid analogy?

    Perhaps because laws that grant monopolies to special interest groups are nothing like laws that protect the physical well-being of the general public.

    Mike was complaining about innovation having to take place within any sort of limitations.

    No, he was complaining about "removing efficiency from the system to protect an inefficient, legacy way of doing business." But I guess you can't see the difference.

    Mike, OF COURSE, ran away

    Well, except for a lengthy and detailed reply to the points you made. Which you completely mischaracterized, then moved the goalposts, as per usual.

  • On the post: Court Orders Google To Comply With National Security Letters, But Suggests It Might Want To Ask Again

    Karl ( profile ), 01 Jun, 2013 @ 06:35pm

    Re:

    Looks like Google is now making money off terrorism:

    No, they're not.

    Hate speech isn't "terrorism," it's speech. It's bad speech, speech you don't (and shouldn't) like, but speech nonetheless.

    And the only thing Google is doing is the same thing it does to all videos on YouTube, regardless of content.

    There's an interesting comment on that story:

    The ads are automatically added to youtube videos, when you have a certain setting enabled... OR is your point that, you really think we ought to be incensed by the ads more than videos themselves? Why doesn't the Daily Mail campaign for Google & Facebook to remove this racist hatred...Millions would back it in heartbeat!!!

    The comment is right: it's not the advertising, it's the message. And his "solution" is censorship.

    Of course, the censorship "solution" is worse for an open society than allowing people to speak, even if it's hate speech.

    But I somehow doubt you have any problem at all with censorship.

  • On the post: RIAA: There's Been No Innovation Stifling Here!

    Karl ( profile ), 30 May, 2013 @ 12:53pm

    Re:

    There is no need for a middleman period.

    I actually disagree with this.

    Certainly, any artist can release their own music and get recognized. But what then? They'll have a lot of things to do, and they won't have time to design and code their own websites, or administer their own mailing lists, or spend hours per day on promotion, or what have you.

    The more successful you are, the more you do need "middlemen." For example, Amanda Palmer has at least a dozen full-time employees who do a lot of that work for her.

    The big difference is that these "middlemen" are enablers, not gatekeepers. That is the entire problem with the recording industry: they do not see themselves as a service economy, with the artists as clients.

    Instead, they view themselves as bosses, and the artists as employees. Their business strategy is to acquire and maintain a monopoly on all music channels, so that artists have no choice but to be their "employees" if they want access to those channels.

    That is what is falling apart right now. And about time, too.

  • On the post: Massive Growth In Independent Musicians & Singers Over The Past Decade

    Karl ( profile ), 30 May, 2013 @ 12:07pm

    Re: Kudos to the RIAA!

    Ha ha, that's a perfect satire of the kind of idiots who...

    Wait, you were serious?

  • On the post: Massive Growth In Independent Musicians & Singers Over The Past Decade

    Karl ( profile ), 30 May, 2013 @ 12:33pm

    Numbers

    I actually brought these numbers up in an earlier comment, but Mike wrote me to say he's doing a story on it, so I didn't say anything about it since then.

    Now that the story's out...

    Everyone who reads this site really should dig into the numbers. I actually spent a fair amount of time doing this, and the numbers are even more interesting than Mike makes them out to be.

    For example: Between 1999 and 2002, there was actually an increase in the number of working musicians - from 46,440 to 53,940 (an increase of 7,500 jobs). Interestingly enough, these are the years that Napster was active; employment didn't start declining until after Napster was shut down.

    Employment levels would not dip below the 1999 levels until 2010.

    It's also interesting to look at they type of people employed by the "Sound Recording Industries." They did employ quite a bit of artists - but they were the type of artists who were graphic designers or illustrators (i.e. people designing advertising).

    The sound recording industries have always employed more "suits" (management, business/financial employees, office administrators, etc) than artists. In many years, the number of musicians employed by the sound recording industries was so low, they didn't even report them.

    Another interesting trend: it's no secret that the sound recording industries are in a bad way. There was an especially bad decrease in employment between 2008 and 2009. But since that decrease, the number of artists (and most everyone else) has declined, but the number of managers and businessmen has actually increased. Not everyone is equally affected, it seems.

    Note: if you do decide to look at the numbers, you have to account for some wackiness at the BLS. "Musicians and Singers" wasn't even an occupational category until 1999.

    Also, prior to 2003, the BLS used the SIC Division Structure, which lumped in the music industry into the "Services, not elsewhere classified" category. They switched to the current NAICS system for 2003, so that's as far back as you can go to get data for the sound recording industry specifically.

    Just FYI. Or perhaps TMI.

  • On the post: Internet Association Hits Back At RIAA's Desire To Wipe Away DMCA Safe Harbors

    Karl ( profile ), 29 May, 2013 @ 03:12pm

    Re:

    Wouldn't the millions and millions of legitimate notices then, by that same logic, mean that things are tilted in favor of the infringers?

    No. That just means that many people use various services to infringe. That isn't going away, no matter how we structure the DMCA.

    In a properly balanced system, the DMCA notices would only take down material if the notice wasn't bogus. A notice-notice-takedown system accomplishes that better than the one we have now.

  • On the post: The Aftermath Of Napster: Letting Incumbents Veto Innovation Slows Down Innovation Drastically

    Karl ( profile ), 29 May, 2013 @ 03:00pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Innovation to Mike means grifters who didn't produce getting the money.

    The hydrogen factory, which is powered by gerbils on wheels, the sun, the moon, and breaking wind power.

    "It's a go-cart, powered by my own sense of self-satisfaction."

  • On the post: Jaron Lanier's Ignorance Of History, Basic Economics And Efficiency Is Getting Ridiculous

    Karl ( profile ), 29 May, 2013 @ 02:40pm

    Re: Re:

    By the way - in 2003, how many of those musicians and singers were employed by "Sound recording industries" (the BLS term for the recording industry)?

    880, total, across the entire United States. In other words, at the absolute height of the good ol' days that Lowery loves to pine for, the "old boss" hired less 4% of all working musicians.

    So, as long as the "new boss" allowed more than 880 musicians to make a living off of their works, Lowery is totally full of shit.

  • On the post: Jaron Lanier's Ignorance Of History, Basic Economics And Efficiency Is Getting Ridiculous

    Karl ( profile ), 29 May, 2013 @ 02:24pm

    Re:

    employment in music is down 45% over the past 10 years.

    This is a lie, and it's obvious where you got that lie: a recent Trichordist story (which I won't even dignify with a link).

    Here's the truth.

    "Musicians and singers" employed as of May 2003: 50,600
    Source: http://www.bls.gov/oes/2003/may/oes272042.htm
    "Musicians and singers" employed as of May 2012: 42,100
    Source: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes272042.htm

    Decline: 8,500 jobs - or, a 16.8% reduction from the 2003 levels.

    Also, keep in mind that the number of musicians employed from 2001 - 2003 was the highest number of employed musicians in history, so it's a biased comparison. In fact, over 4,000 of the jobs that were around in 2003 were created since 1999 - the year Napster arrived on the scene. Employment would not dip below the 1999 levels until 2009, after the entire economy went into recession.

    Don't believe anything you read on the Trichordist site: Lowery is an outright liar.

    In fact, just yesterday I submitted a link to Lowery's bullshit story. Who knows if it will get written up.

  • On the post: Jaron Lanier's Ignorance Of History, Basic Economics And Efficiency Is Getting Ridiculous

    Karl ( profile ), 29 May, 2013 @ 01:59pm

    Re: Kodak is manufacturing; Instagram is re-distributive.

    in order to build up his own credibility for such wacky notions as "give away and pray" and "piracy promotes sales"

    ...neither of which has ever been endorsed by Techdirt.

    You really never get sick of lying, do you?

  • On the post: Internet Association Hits Back At RIAA's Desire To Wipe Away DMCA Safe Harbors

    Karl ( profile ), 29 May, 2013 @ 03:15pm

    Broken link

    By the way: the link around "the industry's real end goal with SOPA" is broken.

    It's likely you left off an end quote, because the URL has "%20target=" appended to the end.

  • On the post: Prenda Continues Character Assassination Of Alan Cooper

    Karl ( profile ), 29 May, 2013 @ 04:35am

    Re: If you're going to use a fake name...

    Late, I know... but:

    I actually had a coach in high school whose name was Richard Wachs. He went by Dick.

    Yes, that's right: "Dick Wax." You can imagine the reaction when he was paged over the school intercom.

  • On the post: Hollywood Studios Send DMCA Takedowns Over Kim Dotcom's Mega Service

    Karl ( profile ), 28 May, 2013 @ 03:02pm

    Re:

    the thousands of other links in the takedown notice that represent a willful infringer getting away with it

    What "thousands of other links?" The only listing in the DMCA notice was to the Mega home page. There was not one single link to any content stored on the Mega site.

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