Mason Wheeler 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (4010)

• On the post: DHS Thinks Homeland Will Be More Secure If Two Federal Agencies Ignore Domestic Terrorists

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2019 @ 11:24am

  The FBI knows the domestic problem is growing:

  Internal FBI figures reviewed by the paper show more domestic terror suspects were arrested in 2018 than “those allegedly inspired by international terror groups.”

  According to FBI data, 150 Americans were arrested for planning to engage in acts of domestic terrorism in 2017, compared to 110 international suspects; in 2018, the ratio was 120 to 100.

  Hang on a second.

  150/110 = 1.363636...

  120/100 = 1.2.

  How then do we say it's "a growing problem" when the figures quoted clearly show that it's getting smaller over time?

• On the post: The Sky Is Rising: The Entertainment Industry Is Thriving, Almost Entirely Because Of The Internet

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 08 Apr, 2019 @ 07:37am

  "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

  Valenti was probably right... just not in the way he thought.

  During the 1960s, the population of Boston was between approximately 640,000 and 700,000 people. Statistically, approximately half of them would have been women, and between approximately 65-70% of Americans were children during that time. A bit of quick math gives us approximately 100,000 adult women.

  All those possible targets, and the Boston Strangler murdered a grand total of 13 of them.

  The VCR was to the American film producer as the Boston Strangler was to the woman home alone: very scary to talk about, but the amount of actual damage done was negligible.

• On the post: German Government's Bullying Of FOI Group Provides A Warning Of How EU's New Upload Filters Will Be Used For Censorship

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2019 @ 07:30am

  Re: Re:

  Such a hope would rest on everyone playing fair, and playing nice. Instead, we seem to be sociopathic, and part of that is exploiting trust in others.

  Not at all. About 90% of people are basically honest and decent. It's just a matter of a few "bad apples" screwing things up for the rest of us.

• On the post: German Government's Bullying Of FOI Group Provides A Warning Of How EU's New Upload Filters Will Be Used For Censorship

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2019 @ 07:28am

  Re:

  Not really, seeing as how it's the parts that were written after the creation of the World Wide Web that do the most harm.

• On the post: Copyright Enforcement Service Claims $600 Billion-Worth Of Images Are 'Stolen' Every Day

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2019 @ 08:02am

  typo

  Even in the most fevered dream of the most overwrought copyright maximalist could this number be considered plausible.

  I believe this sentence should begin with the word "not".

• On the post: Techdirt Podcast Episode 206: Charter Cities & Innovative Governance

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 03 Apr, 2019 @ 12:42pm

  This is one of the most disturbing podcasts I've seen Techdirt do.

  The idea of having a town with a "CEO" in charge, administered by a publicly-traded, for-profit entity, is not actually anything new. They were a common enough thing in the USA in the 19th century, known as "company towns," and rather than lifting people out of poverty, they quickly garnered a well-earned reputation as poverty traps to keep people trapped in poverty and limit both their opportunities for economic advancement and their ability to leave.

  The ideas put forth about providing for the rule of law and making better opportunities for entrepreneurs are great, but Tamara Winter loses all credibility the second she brings up the IMF and the World Bank as "legitimate stakeholders" in the process of trying to make this scenario less dystopian. They have a long history of using their financial leverage to encourage exactly the sort of dystopian abuses that we're trying to avoid here. (Just look at the World Bank's role in the water privatization fiasco in Cochabamba, Bolivia, for one of the best-known examples.)

• On the post: Here Comes The Splinternet: How The EU Is Helping Break Apart The Internet

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 01 Apr, 2019 @ 07:47am

  Re: Re: Re:

  Time to Godwin: 22 comments. Not the fastest I've seen on here, but still pretty impressive...

• On the post: Australian Prosecutors Trying To Throw Reporters In Jail For Accurately Reporting On Cardinal George Pell's Conviction

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 29 Mar, 2019 @ 07:22am

  Re: Re:

  Wow, really? Australia is weird!

• On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2019 @ 02:27pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re:

  This has nothing to do with "governments restricting people's freedoms," and everything to do with technological progress. Radio-controlled aircraft have existed for a long time, but it's only recently that their range and agility are increasing to the point where they could reliably 1) be a credible threat to aircraft and 2) be deployed as such with a reasonable expectation that the person doing so could avoid being caught. Plenty of things "exist for a long time" before they really take off. Karl Benz invented the automobile almost a quarter-century before the Model T Ford made them mainstream, to give just one obvious example. But once the right change occurs, a product can explode from obscurity to ubiquity practically overnight. (Look up a book called The Tipping Point for some good discussion into how this all works.)

• On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2019 @ 02:21pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re:

  No, because it's not about willingness; it's about convenience. There are several orders of magnitude more people who would be willing to bring down a plane, (or even to simply present a credible threat of being able to do so, for purposes of extortion, terror, or purely for the lulz,) than people who have the capability to actually do so. To put it simply, if drones reach a point where 1) they're as easy to obtain as guns and 2) they're capable of reliably attacking a jet engine... then it's hard to escape the conclusion that that, in the absence of reliable defensive technology, (which does not currently exist,) plane-killings will become approximately as common as mass shootings are today. And condition #1 has already been satisfied.

• On the post: Thomas Goolnik Again Convinces Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik Getting Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2019 @ 11:13am

  Re: Re: Re:

  Agreed. This is an excellent indication of why the passive voice is so insidious. Phrased properly in active voice, it's the Right To Force Others To Forget About You.

• On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2019 @ 07:42am

  Re: Re:

  Planners are still insisting trains are needed in low-density cities and that high-speed-rail will be competitive with airlines and autonomous vehicles despite clear evidence that they will be utterly obsolete (and not just ridiculously uneconomical) in 20-30 years tops.

  Depends on who you listen to. I heard one guy recently lay out a scarily plausible scenario in which the easy availability of small, cheap drones puts an end to commercial aviation entirely within the next 20-ish years, because of how ridiculously easy it will become for any bad actor anywhere to use one to create a "bird strike". If we don't come up with a good, solid countermeasure to this, trains (or Hyperloops!) may well be the future of transportation.

• On the post: Enough MEPs Say They Mistakenly Voted For Articles 11 & 13 That The Vote Should Have Flipped; EU Parliament Says Too Bad

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2019 @ 07:37am

  Re: Re: Re: Blocking won't work

  For it to be a felony under the CFAA, they have to prove that you intended to damage the network, and bypassing geoblocking does not damage their network, so CFAA does not apply

  Up until now, this has been true, but with the new regime I'm not so sure. I could see a case being made for the notion that knowingly, deliberately introducing legal liability to a site where none existed before does real, actionable damage.

• On the post: New York City Apartment Residents Sue Landlord Over New Smart Locks [Updated]

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2019 @ 11:15am

  Remember, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

• On the post: Thomas Goolnik Again Convinces Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik Getting Google To Forget Our Story About Thomas Goolnik

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2019 @ 09:46am

  It's Thomas Goolnik all the way down...

• On the post: RIAA Continues Its Legal War To Turn ISPs Into The Copyright Police: Sues Charter Communications

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2019 @ 12:32pm

  Re:

  Well, as an old saying goes, some of us just want to watch the world burn. Popcorn?

  No thanks, I'd prefer to help save it. Why? Because I'm one of the idiots who lives in the world!

• On the post: New Zealand Censors Declare Christchurch Shooting Footage Illegal; Start Rounding Up Violators

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2019 @ 11:11am

  Re: Re: Re: Re:

  OK, that makes more sense.

• On the post: EU Puts An End To The Open Internet: Link Taxes And Filters Approved By Just 5 Votes

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2019 @ 10:07am

  Re: It appears...

  Basic marketing - if you have to pay to be in a market, don't sell in that market.

  That seems to be a somewhat overbroad statement, considering the widespread existence of shopping malls and similar setups...

• On the post: EU Puts An End To The Open Internet: Link Taxes And Filters Approved By Just 5 Votes

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2019 @ 08:05am

  Re: Re:

  Hey, you never know! Maybe this one might actually be valuable!

• On the post: New Zealand Censors Declare Christchurch Shooting Footage Illegal; Start Rounding Up Violators

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2019 @ 07:46am

  Re: Re:

  Why is that an illegal snuff film and not war crime footage?

  Umm... maybe because you can't have a war crime when no state of war exists?

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