Khym Chanur 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Producer Scott Rudin Going Around Killing Off Licensed Community Theater Shows Of To Kill A Mockingbird

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2019 @ 02:12pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    I wasn't talking about whether or not Thad's analysis of the book was correct or not. I was saying that Thad's analysis doesn't imply that white people shouldn't get due process.

  • On the post: Producer Scott Rudin Going Around Killing Off Licensed Community Theater Shows Of To Kill A Mockingbird

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2019 @ 01:43pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

    Saying that rape accusations against powerful white men in the present day aren't motivated by race isn't at all the same thing as saying that those accusations must be true, nor is it the same as saying that those men shouldn't be afforded due process. Also, saying that To Kill a Mockingbird is about racism rather than about due process isn't at all the same as saying that white people shouldn't get due process.

  • On the post: Why Is The EU Parliament Pushing Fake Propaganda From Hollywood?

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2019 @ 09:37am

    Re: Re: Re:

    So your position is that the collateral damage opponents claim Article 13 will cause is overstated, and the actual amount of collateral damage won't be nearly enough to avoid enacting it? Or is your position that if companies can't comply with the law then it merely means that their business model is broken, and thus it doesn't count as collateral damage at all? If the latter, then what about non-profits like Wikipedia which host user generated content, and also private individuals whose content gets false positives by filters?

  • On the post: Why Is The EU Parliament Pushing Fake Propaganda From Hollywood?

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 01 Mar, 2019 @ 09:23am

    Re:

    The public doesn't clamor for IP rights, just the tax revenue it generates.
    How much tax revenue is being lost to piracy? You can argue that even if the pirate wouldn't have bought a copy if they'd had had to pay money that 1) it's still theft of IP, and 2) it robs the content owner of adding a new person to their rentable mailing lists. However, that doesn't apply to tax revenue: if the pirate would never have bought a copy, that act of piracy isn't reducing tax revenue.

  • On the post: Mozilla Says Australia's Compelled Access Law Could Turn Staff There Into 'Insider Threats'

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2019 @ 12:55pm

    Re: Re: Re: Question for Andrew Hastie,

    Look, all we're asking for is seven mutually perpendicular red lines drawn with green ink. How hard can it be?

  • On the post: Mozilla Says Australia's Compelled Access Law Could Turn Staff There Into 'Insider Threats'

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 28 Feb, 2019 @ 12:42pm

    Re: Question for Andrew Hastie,

    In that case, how are they meant to provide access to communications.
    I think what he means by that is "look, we know that there must exist ways for you to give us what we want without introducing any weaknesses, if you'd just nerd harder you'd figure it out".

  • On the post: California AG Says Journalist Broke The Law By Obtaining A List Of Convicted Officers Via A Public Records Request

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2019 @ 12:50pm

    Re: What about the non-police officer who was doxxed?

    These journalists clearly need the book thrown at them since this list illegally includes a non police officer on it.
    According to the article:
    The journalists are vetting the list to ensure they haven't misidentified any of the 12,000 officers on the list and have not published it in full.

  • On the post: California AG Says Journalist Broke The Law By Obtaining A List Of Convicted Officers Via A Public Records Request

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2019 @ 12:40pm

    Oops

    The letter also references § 11143:

    Any person, except those specifically referred to in Section 1070 of the Evidence Code , who, knowing he is not authorized by law to receive a record or information obtained from a record, knowingly buys, receives, or possesses the record or information is guilty of a misdemeanor.
    But I wonder if that would stand up to a constitutional challenge.

  • On the post: California AG Says Journalist Broke The Law By Obtaining A List Of Convicted Officers Via A Public Records Request

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 27 Feb, 2019 @ 12:31pm

    The law in question...

    The letter from Attorney General Xavier Becerra references §§ 11105, which seems to be this.

    Any information obtained from the state summary criminal history is confidential and the receiving public utility or cable corporation shall not disclose its contents, other than for the purpose for which it was acquired. ...

    A violation of this paragraph is a misdemeanor, and shall give the current or prospective employee who is injured by the violation a cause of action against the public utility or cable corporation to recover damages proximately caused by the violations. ...

    For purposes of this paragraph, cable corporation means any corporation or firm that transmits or provides television, computer, or telephone services by cable, digital, fiber optic, satellite, or comparable technology to subscribers for a fee. ...

    So, unless I'm missing anything, I don't think the journalists are in any trouble.

  • On the post: Court Says DOJ's Attempt To Force Facebook To Break Encryption Can Remain Under Seal

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2019 @ 07:32am

    Re: Re:

    Other than the actual encryption algorithm, just how many ways are there to implement encrypted messaging, and how could any of them be actual secrets?
    The details of a protocol for passing and verifying messages with end-to-end encryption can be done in lots of different ways, though at a broad level there aren't that many ways to do it properly. It might be possible for someone to come up with some clever new twist to it, but if it really was a new twist that no one else had thought of then it'd be a prime candidate for a patent, rather than using a trade secret. Possibilities for claiming a trade secret:
    1. The executive in charge of the situation just reflexively claims trade secrets for everything.
    2. The executive in charge believes in security through obscurity, despite everything the engineers say.
    3. They've realized that there's some weakness in the security of the protocol, a weakness which shows up in the court filings. If they change the protocol to fix it this would somehow reveal the weakness of the original protocol, and rather than get the certain hit to their reputation for revealing that they'd rather do nothing and hope that no security researcher ever notices.
    4. Something in the court filings reveals that they've implemented their protocol in a way that lets them harvest more metadata than people might expect, and they don't want to reveal this.
    And about the encryption algorithm used: they'd use an existing algorithm which has been vetted by security experts, as you'd have to be a complete noob in security to roll your own encryption algorithm. (Of course, maybe they were a complete noob and that's what they want to hide)

  • On the post: Court Says DOJ's Attempt To Force Facebook To Break Encryption Can Remain Under Seal

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 25 Feb, 2019 @ 03:31am

    The investigation can't last forever

    However, the "investigative techniques" the DoJ is seeking to protect can last longer than any particular investigation, so we probably won't find out about them until either they become obsolete or someone leaks them.

    According to the DOJ, it was nothing more than asking a few smart people to do a few smart things, so the burden Facebook complaints about "burdensome requests" was overstated.

    How exactly does one go about arguing against an order to "nerd harder" when the order itself is secret? In normal circumstances you could call in expert witnesses to explain, but when the order is secret is it possible to bring swear a witness to secrecy so they can be let in on it? Or do you have to hope that one of the hypotheticals experts have publicly argued against happens to be exactly what the DoJ is secretly asking for?

  • On the post: YouTube Filters At It Again: Pokemon YouTubers Have Accounts Nuked Over Child Porn Discussions That Weren't Occurring

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2019 @ 05:00pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    He's indirectly attacking Article 11/13, SOPA, etc. or any system of automatic filtering.
    It's not possible for him to care about this in-and-of itself?

  • On the post: YouTube Filters At It Again: Pokemon YouTubers Have Accounts Nuked Over Child Porn Discussions That Weren't Occurring

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2019 @ 04:10pm

    Re:

    This comes down to the internet versus copyright,
    ???? What in the world does this have to do with copyright?

  • On the post: YouTube Filters At It Again: Pokemon YouTubers Have Accounts Nuked Over Child Porn Discussions That Weren't Occurring

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 22 Feb, 2019 @ 03:59pm

    So if you wanted to use YouTube to discuss, say, fighting child porn, to avoid an auto-ban you'd have to refer to it as "you know what" like you were a Harry Potter character not daring to directly refer to Voldemort?

  • On the post: Facebook Ups Surveillance Of Users To Keep Tabs On People Who Don't Like Facebook

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 21 Feb, 2019 @ 02:27pm

    Re: I can't believe...

    Talk bad about your boss or the company you work for IN THE OFFICE, and you're going to have problems.
    Problems which shouldn't extend to being labelled a potentially dangerous person.

  • On the post: Wrestler Booker T Sues Activision For Copyright Infringement Over Fairly Generic Character Depiction

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 15 Feb, 2019 @ 08:40pm

    Re:

    Are there more similarities beyond:

    ... both [being] African American gunslingers in combat gear with long hair.
    Or do you hold that that's enough for copyright infringement?

  • On the post: Utter Bullshit: Reporter Maria Ressa Arrested Over Bogus Charges For Her Critical Reporting

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2019 @ 12:16pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    So they follow the link and, in some cases, now their computer is infected with a virus, put there by liars for the specific purpose of misleading the stooge into mistreating the target.
    Wait, what? How is a virus infection from a webpage defaming John Doe going to mislead people about John Doe?
    What these Googlers don't realize is that their internet searches for gossip or "dirt" become part of THEIR internet history, and fair game for reviews of THEIR businesses (including law practices), or websites about THEM, which, unlike the defamatory websites, are not lying.
    How are third parties going to get their hands on someone's search history? I mean, in theory Google could sell the search histories of individuals to third parties, in which case if I didn't like John Doe I could buy his search history and put it up on a website, but Google isn't going that now. Are you implying that Google will start doing this in the near future, so people should be worried about their search histories?

  • On the post: Utter Bullshit: Reporter Maria Ressa Arrested Over Bogus Charges For Her Critical Reporting

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2019 @ 12:06pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    Female victims of revenge porn should have had this option but did not. If you place Google's need to exist above a woman's need not to be targeted by revenge porn, I'd say that speaks for itself.
    I'd agree that Google should voluntarily do this. And in the absence of Section 230 varios revenge porn laws might require Google to take down links to revenge porn (depending on the wording of the laws). Is that all you're saying? I'm uncertain as to whether or not you're implying that revenge porn is a type of defamation that would fall under defamation laws.

  • On the post: Utter Bullshit: Reporter Maria Ressa Arrested Over Bogus Charges For Her Critical Reporting

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2019 @ 11:54am

    Re: Re: Re:

    They exist because of the notice-and-takedown setup that allows them to avoid liability if they remove defamatory content once put on notice.
    Ah, okay. For some reason I'd assumed that you wouldn't be in favor of any sort of safe harbor provisions like that when it came to defamation; my bad.

  • On the post: Utter Bullshit: Reporter Maria Ressa Arrested Over Bogus Charges For Her Critical Reporting

    Khym Chanur ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2019 @ 11:51am

    Re:

    ... which is why anyone who relies on Google to check out other people has defective DNA ...
    Anyone who uses Google to check out other people will presumably follow the link to see who is making the claim about the PoI (Person of Interest):
    • If the one making the claim about the PoI is anonymous, then they checker would presumably give that claim the appropriate weight.
    • If the one making the claim was not anonymous, but in a country making it difficult or impossible to sue, then presumably the checker would also give that claim the appropriate weight.
    • If the one making the claim was not anonymous and in a country making it easy to sue them, then presumably the checker would also give that claim the appropriate weight.

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