Mason Wheeler 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (4010)

• On the post: The FBI Is Now Looking Into Those Bogus Net Neutrality Comments

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2018 @ 12:52pm

  Over the weekend, Daily Beast reporter Kevin Collier noted that two additional AG's offices (Massachusetts and Washington, DC) -- and the FBI -- have also started digging into those fake comments as well

  Huh. I wasn't aware that DC had its own Attorney General. This is something distinct from the AG of the USA, right?

• On the post: Legacy Copyright Industries Lobbying Hard For EU Copyright Directive… While Pretending That Only Google Is Lobbying

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2018 @ 12:05pm

  After the EU Parliament put the breaks on the bill back in July

  I assume you mean "brakes"?

• On the post: Malware Purveyors Targeting Pirate Sites With Bogus DMCA Takedown Notices

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 12 Dec, 2018 @ 11:59am

  Wow, just when you think the DMCA can't get any worse! What were the lawmakers thinking when they created this part of the statute?

• On the post: When Not Hiding Cameras In Traffic Barrels And Streetlights, The DEA Is Shoving Them Into… Vacuums?

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2018 @ 12:10pm

  The best solution is don't do illegal stuff

  You could have just stopped there...

• On the post: While Everyone's Busy, Hollywood & Record Labels Suggest Congress Bring Back SOPA

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2018 @ 10:57am

  ...and here we are. This is what I've been saying for the last seven years: saying no to SOPA isn't enough, because the problem isn't SOPA. The problem is the precedent that SOPA is building on, set by the DMCA, that establishing intermediary liability and getting Internet companies to do your dirty work for you extralegally is a valid tactic.

  When a weed grows in your garden, if you just cut it off, it will grow back as long as the roots remain intact. Which is exactly what we're seeing here. The only solution that's actually effective is to pull up the roots as well.

  Until we repeal the DMCA, and return Internet law to the same standard of sanity we have everywhere else, where the accused is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, (although that incredibly-important standard is coming under fire in more and more areas as time goes by, which shows what a bad idea it was to ever let it get chipped away at in this one area in the first place!) we will continue to get crap like this trying to make it even worse.

  Shutting down SOPA is not enough. We must push back.

• On the post: Microsoft Posts List Of Facial Recognition Tech Guidelines It Thinks The Government Should Make Mandatory

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2018 @ 08:02am

  We must ensure that the year 2024 doesn’t look like a page from the novel “1984.”

  The further we go, the more it ends up looking like we're on course for Jennifer Government instead...

• On the post: When A 'Trade War' Involves Seizing And Imprisoning Foreign Execs, It's No Longer Just About Trade

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 07 Dec, 2018 @ 11:41am

  If I were an American business exec, I'd stay far away from China or any of its allies right about now.

  Yes, this is a good idea just as a general principle.

  China has been blatantly abusing us in every way they can think of ever since the Nixon administration, and for all the stupid crap he's done wrong, it's good to see President Trump at least get this one right. I wouldn't have expected him to be the president who finally calls them on their behavior and actively works to get a more equitable system in place, but it would seem that that's the world we're living in today.

• On the post: Rudy Giuliani's Paranoid Nonsense Tweet Is A Good Reminder That We Need Actual Cybersecurity Experts In Government

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2018 @ 01:02pm

  Re: Re: Re:

  How?
  
  Put in place the same basic system they have on StackOverflow (quick corrective edits within the first 5 minutes are "free," and after that you get a note on the post that it's been edited, and a link to the edit history) and the potential for abuse by trolls virtually disappears.

• On the post: The TV Sector's Latest Bad Idea: Ads That Play When You Press Pause

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2018 @ 10:55am

  in a bid to keep people from switching to streaming alternatives to heading to piracy.

  Should that be "or heading to piracy"?

• On the post: What Do Pot And Software Have In Common? Stupid Patent Thickets Based On A Lack Of Patented Prior Art

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2018 @ 10:49am

  What Do Pot And Software Have In Common?

  They both call their customers "users."

• On the post: Telecom's Top Lobbying Arm Oddly Keeps Undermining The Industry's Own Claims About Net Neutrality

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2018 @ 08:55am

  In just a year and a half, from the end of 2015 to mid-2017, U.S. fiber deployment grew from 21 percent to 29 percent of homes

  Is that homes actually served, or "there's a fiber optic line within half a mile of at least one home somewhere in your neighborhood"?

• On the post: Some EU Nations Still Haven't Implemented The 2013 Marrakesh Treaty For The Blind

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2018 @ 08:13am

  Even once the treaty was agreed, the publishing industry continued to fight against making it easier for the visually impaired to enjoy better access to books. In 2016, Techdirt reported that the Association of American Publishers was still lobbying to water down the US ratification package.

  Wow. Publishing interests were just fine with abusing the mechanism of international treaties to ram the DMCA down our nation's throat after we had considered it through the proper channels and rejected it. But now that the shoe's on the other foot, just watch them look for any excuse they can find to derail it!

• On the post: Rudy Giuliani's Paranoid Nonsense Tweet Is A Good Reminder That We Need Actual Cybersecurity Experts In Government

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2018 @ 11:14am

  Re:

  Giuliani even. (from the why-oh-why-do-we-still-not-have-an-edit-comment-button dept)

• On the post: Good For The World, But Not Good For Us: The Really Damning Bits Of The Facebook Revelations

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2018 @ 02:31pm

  indeed, by putting a "price" on the access, Facebook likely limited the access to companies who had every reason to not abuse the data

  Umm...?

  I suppose that might be true "from a certain point of view," as Obi-Wan put it. That point of view being Facebook's definition of "abuse." It's worth keeping in mind, though, that the users whose data is being used are likely to have a very different idea as to what constitutes abuse, and the fact that people are paying Facebook good money for it does nothing to shield them from abusive behavior.

• On the post: Verizon Dinged Again For Privacy Violations, This Time For Slinging Personalized Ads To Kids

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2018 @ 12:07pm

  But much like the company's fine for its earlier scandal, the fine itself is likely a small fraction of the money made during the time AOL spent intentionally turning a blind eye as behavior ads were aimed at kids and kid-frequented websites.

  And herein lies the heart of the problem. As long as the penalties for such violations can be written off as "the cost of doing business," companies will continue to do business in this way.

  A modest proposal for fixing it: The Crime Does Not Pay Act. (Because laws apparently need cool, memorable names these days.) Any business caught willfully breaking the law in pursuit of profit shall be fined a minimum of 100% of the gross income brought in by their unlawful dealings.

• On the post: Rudy Giuliani's Paranoid Nonsense Tweet Is A Good Reminder That We Need Actual Cybersecurity Experts In Government

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2018 @ 11:14am

  Ugh, Giuliana comes across as a total Twit here!

• On the post: Rudy Giuliani's Paranoid Nonsense Tweet Is A Good Reminder That We Need Actual Cybersecurity Experts In Government

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 05 Dec, 2018 @ 11:05am

  the latest chapters in his life seem to be a mad dash to undue whatever shred of goodwill or credibility he might have left

  I assume you mean "undo"?

• On the post: Dystopia Now: Insurance Company Secretly Spying On Sleep Apnea Patients

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 30 Nov, 2018 @ 08:12am

  Re: Re: Re: Re:

  That's actually good. If insurance only covers catastrophes, people (especially poor people who can't easily afford routine medical care) have an incentive to wait until their condition is catastrophic before getting care.

  Yes, but now we're back to my original point: if it were not for Wall Street insurance companies driving the prices of health care up in order to price out of the market anyone who doesn't buy their financial products, routine care would not be unaffordable to John Q. Citizen.

• On the post: But Her Emails: Ivanka Trump Also Used A Private Email Account For Official Government Business

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 30 Nov, 2018 @ 08:09am

  Re: Chesterton's Fence

  I assume by referring to Chesterton's Fence you meant to imply that our winner-take-all system of counting votes by district
  
  I meant to imply nothing at all about counting votes by district. What you were talking about was our presumed failure to replace the Electoral College with a majority vote system.
  
  > Otherwise, I'll just assume you like the current system because it helps to elect the party to which you hold (irrational) loyalty.
  
  And which one would that be? I'm curious as to where you think my (irrational) affiliations lie based on things I've said in the past.

• On the post: Exec Who Had Sealed US Court Docs Seized By UK Parliament Suggests UK Journalist Tipped Off Parliament

  

  Mason Wheeler ( profile ), 30 Nov, 2018 @ 11:53am

  some of the details that the company, Six4Three ... was claiming proved that Facebook was engaged in anticompetitive practices when it changed the way its API worked.

  Wait, isn't that common knowledge? Everyone already knows that the reason why they made those changes was to make it more difficult to share information with third parties--AKA anticompetitive practices. IIRC they flat-out admitted as much, cloaking it in self-serving language about protecting users' privacy, and Mike even did an article about how that was a disingenuous explanation at best, as what it really did was strengthen Facebook's control over information and increase their degree of lock-in.

  Or am I thinking of some other API change that they made to screw over everyone else? It wouldn't surprise me to hear they'd done so multiple times...

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