Kenneth Michaels 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: DOJ Morality Police May Be Behind Chase Closing Bank Accounts Of Adult Film Actors

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 01 May, 2014 @ 08:14am

    Porn Funds Terrorism

    Studies show that porn is funding terrorism, just as intellectual property theft (particularly copyright theft) is.

  • On the post: DOJ Morality Police May Be Behind Chase Closing Bank Accounts Of Adult Film Actors

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 01 May, 2014 @ 08:08am

    Financial Cutoff

    Don't forget that the FBI is a racketeering organization -
    Article: "Is the FBI a Racketeering Organization" (Forbes)
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/07/31/is-the-fbi-a-racketeering-organization/

    And, creating financial difficulty is also part of a larger scheme to target those the feds don't like -

    Article: "How the Feds Disable Criminal Defense" (Forbes) http://www.forbes.com/sites/harveysilverglate/2013/01/03/black-whitey-how-the-feds-disable-criminal-defense/

  • On the post: White House Says It Can Withhold Vulnerabilities If It Will Help Them Catch 'Intellectual Property Thieves'

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2014 @ 12:16pm

    Re: Vulnerabilities for IP theft?

    They will use the vulnerabilities to go after the administrators of the pirate bay - just like how they used vulnerabilities to go after Kim Dotcom (the NSA infected his computers during their investigations).

  • On the post: Jeffrey Katzenberg: The New Pricing Model For Movies Will Be Based On The Viewer's Screen Size

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2014 @ 01:31pm

    Anti-Circumvention Measures

    Tim, you better be careful with what you say: "Add to that the simple methods for getting around the pricing model (such as hooking up a smart phone to a television screen with a $2 cable)...."

    That could be considered a circumvention measure, subjecting you to criminal copyright infringement liability.

  • On the post: White House Says It Can Withhold Vulnerabilities If It Will Help Them Catch 'Intellectual Property Thieves'

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2014 @ 10:39am

    Clever redefinitions

    The year is 2005, a two step plan:
    Step 1. Redefine copyright infringement as "intellectual property theft."
    Step 2. Redefine "misappropriation of trade secrets" as "intellectual property theft."

    Result:
    1. what should read: "to stop the misappropriation of trade secrets by foreign black-hat hackers cracking into our computers"
    2. becomes: "to stop the theft of our nation's intellectual property"
    3. the latter includes copyright infringement!!! Yea!

    Skip ahead to 2012: These new definitions allow the United States Government to use undisclosed exploits to hack into Kim Dotcom's computers to bring him down under dubious interpretations of US copyright law!! Yippie!! Plan worked. Lets keep it going!

  • On the post: Supreme Court Smacks Down CAFC Again: Says Courts Have More Free Rein In Awarding Attorneys Fees

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2014 @ 06:56am

    smack down *again*

    Because the Federal Circuit has exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases, there is never a "circuit split" that would require the Supreme Court to pick a winning Circuit and losing Circuit on a point of law. In fact, there is never any reason for the Supreme Court to review the Federal Circuit unless the Supreme Court already disagrees with the Federal Circuit on a point of law.

    So, every Supreme Court case will be a "smack down" of the Federal Circuit. But it still makes for a sensationalist headline I suppose.

  • On the post: ICE Takes To Twitter In Ridiculous Attempt To Defend Interrogating A Man In A Movie Theater For Wearing Google Glass

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2014 @ 02:02pm

    Re: Re: MT? - Mike, have you found the RT/MT

    I could not find the original tweet that was supposedly modified. I don't think it is a modified RT, I think @wwwicegov is taking it from somewhere else. Bad form.

  • On the post: Pharmacy Group Lies To Registrars: If We Complain About A Site, It Must Be Taken Down No Questions Asked

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 10 Jan, 2014 @ 01:43pm

    You forgot the word "domains"

    First they came for the filesharing domains. Go after the people sharing files, not the domains, the Registrar is not sharing files. You have missed the entire point of the sentence.

  • On the post: Pharmacy Group Lies To Registrars: If We Complain About A Site, It Must Be Taken Down No Questions Asked

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 10 Jan, 2014 @ 01:55pm

    Top "rogue" sites based on customer satisfaction

    (To avoid block, I post this without links.) The letter from NABP mentions legitscript [d*t] com. That site keeps a list of the top "rogue" pharmacy sites here: legitscript [d*t] com/research

    The top sites are selected based on their longevity (they must keep customers happy!) and "world-wide" customer reach (the internet!). If you are looking for good, cheap drugs, I would try one of the listed top sites:
    [list removed]

  • On the post: DOJ Finally Realizing That It Has Absolutely No Case Against Julian Assange

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2013 @ 11:02am

    Assange and Barrett Brown

    They could charge Assange with the same thing they charged Barrett Brown with - the possession of stolen credit card information from the Stratfor leak.

    The DOJ statement is with respect to the Manning leaks, not the other stuff that Wikileaks does. That is why the Grand Jury is still working on the Assange case....

  • On the post: Google Gets Total Victory Over Authors Guild: Book Scanning Is Fair Use

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 14 Nov, 2013 @ 11:40am

    Intellectual Property or Intellectual Monopoly

    Agreed. In fact, nothing should be labeled "intellectual property" or even "intellectual monopoly." There is no such thing. We have copyright, patent rights, trade secrets, and trademarks. The term "intellectual property" was only ever intended as a convenient way to refer to those rights, but the term has been abused by propagandists to mislead people into thinking these rights are more than they are.

  • On the post: TPP IP Chapter Leaked, Confirming It's Worse Than ACTA

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 13 Nov, 2013 @ 10:47am

    Criminalization of Personal Copying

    This version of TPP effectively criminalized a person carrying an iPod full of "pirated" music for personal listening - but the text somewhat hides this fact. It criminalizes infringement on a "commercial scale", but given that our MP3 players can carry more music than found in a physical store, everyone is in the "commercial scale" category. It specifically criminalizes "commercial scale" even for "infringements that have no direct or indirect motivation of financial gain."

    We'll all be criminals unless we can show where we got licenses for each song!

  • On the post: TSA Security Checks Begin Long Before Travelers Arrive At The Airport

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2013 @ 04:32pm

    Be a good citizen or be harassed

    Air travel is essential to our modern lives - at least for everyone who is anyone of import. These TSA procedures are just one way to enforce being a good, model citizen.

    If you are a model citizen (and do not raise any red flags), then you can easily travel by air. If you are not a model citizen, then you will be harassed and your life will be more difficult. As a non-model citizen you will either have to put up with the harassment or not fly at all - limiting your effectiveness as a threat to the government in either case (conveniently providing a disincentive from becoming a non-model citizen).

    Being flagged as a non-model citizen may include: calling the wrong person; calling someone who calls the wrong person; including the wrong words in your emails; emailing someone who calls the wrong person; etc.

    But don't worry, because ordinary citizens have nothing to worry about. For those non-ordinary, non-model citizens, visiting family and conducting business will be a lot more difficult. Got it? Be a model citizen, okay?

  • On the post: The NSA Didn't Actually Address All Of The FISA Court's Concerns, Contrary To What It Claims

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2013 @ 11:01am

    Inexorably

    I think you are not interpreting the use of "inexorably" correctly. Inexorably means "not to be persuaded, moved, or stopped." See http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inexorable

    So, the court is saying that it cannot be stopped from being "led to the conclusion that the targeting procedures are 'reasonably designed' to prevent the intentional acquisition of any communication as to which the sender and all intended recipients are known at the time of the acquisition to be located in the United States." I do not believe the court is saying that it "isn?t persuaded that the NSA?s targeting procedures have been 'reasonably designed' to prevent the intentional collection of wholly domestic communications," as you state.

    An example in the dictionary is "the inexorable rise of a political movement." In other words, you can't stop the rise of the political movement.

    I do not know if this changes the outcome of your article. TL;DR.

  • On the post: NSA, GCHQ Admit That The Public Is The Enemy

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 06 Sep, 2013 @ 06:51am

    No contingency plan

    As Schneier said in one of his posts, the NSA clearly had no contingency plan of what to do if these secrets became public. If they had thought that any of this ever had a chance of becoming public, they would not have chosen such code names - and they would not have used Google's logo, Yahoo's logo, Skype's logo, on their documents, etc.

  • On the post: Government's Redaction Fail Causes Exceptionally Grave Damage To Nation's Security

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2013 @ 02:35pm

    Not Government's error

    A Court usually doesn't do its own redactions - it asks the parties to do it. So, this error was likely Google's attorney's error, not the Court's error (or the "government's" error).

    The attorney in question now has to do a "mea culpa" to the Court, and he faces disciplinary action.

  • On the post: White House Says It Had 'No Role' In UK Detention Of David Miranda, But Did Have A 'Heads Up'

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2013 @ 12:37pm

    Thuggish Police State Tactics in the UK

    It "did reveal the thuggish tactics and police-state mentality by the UK government."

    Hello? This headline from 2012, for example: "PM apologises for MI5's role in murder of Ulster lawyer." For the past 4 decades the UK has shown "thuggish" tactics in northern Ireland. Killing the accused's lawyers was par for the course in 1989. Not much has changed really.

  • On the post: Pro-NSA Editorial Flails Wildly, Snarks At Internet Users And Claims Those Challenging NSA's Reach 'Hate Obama'

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 13 Aug, 2013 @ 06:15am

    NSA, Copyright Infringement, Kim Dotcom, and Megaupload

    In the NYT article that mentioned that the NSA refused to use collected data for investigating copyright infringement, the NSA said it refused to do so on "American targets" for "fear they could be misused in ways that violate Americans? privacy rights".

    Kim Dotcom, Megaupload, and friends are all non-American. There is no indication that the NSA refused to share data about Kim Dotcom et al. In fact, given what we know now, it appears likely that the NSA was involved with spying on Kim Dotcom for the MPAA: his computers were infected with secret spyware, the GCSB was involved, etc.

    So, the NSA has likely spied on non-Americans to investigate copyright copyright infringement for the MPAA.

    NYT Article: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/us/other-agencies-clamor-for-data-nsa-compiles.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&

  • On the post: FBI Pushing Real-Time Metadata-Harvesting 'Port Readers' On Service Providers

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 06 Aug, 2013 @ 12:04pm

    Packet Size is Content of Communication

    Even when streaming voice is encrypted, it is possible to determine what is said via a side-channel attack by knowing the *packet size* of the VoIP stream. A variable bit-rate for the encoder/decoder leaks information as to what is said, which is revealed by the packet size. See Bruce Schneier: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/06/eavesdropping_o_2.html

    Thus, packet size is not metadata, it is content.

  • On the post: President Obama Calls Ed Snowden A 'Hacker' When He Didn't Hack Anything

    Kenneth Michaels ( profile ), 27 Jun, 2013 @ 02:28pm

    And now they can charge him for "theft" under 18 USC 641

    The DOJ has to accuse him of some sort of "criminal entry, or criminal or civil trespass," so they could charge with "theft of government property" under 18 USC 641 (see the criminal complaint). See Techdirt article about DOJ guidelines:
    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130624/12345623597/doj-guidelines-inappropriate-to-prosecute-leaking-govt-information-as-theft-govt-property.shtml

    More specifically, the DOJ guidelines state (see part 3):
    "for the reasons set forth below,...it is inappropriate to bring a prosecution under 18 U.S.C. ? 641 [theft] when: (1) the subject of the theft is intangible property, i.e., government information owned by, or under the care, custody, or control of the United States; (2) the defendant obtained or used the property primarily for the purpose of disseminating it to the public; and (3) the property was not obtained as a result of wiretapping, (18 U.S.C. ? 2511) interception of correspondence (18 U.S.C. ?? 1702, 1708), criminal entry, or criminal or civil trespass."

    There you go!

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