mcherm 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: High School Principal Cancels Entire Reading Program To Stop Students From Reading Cory Doctorow's 'Little Brother'

    mcherm ( profile ), 06 Jun, 2014 @ 01:55pm

    Re: Wait...

    Actually, it isn't even necessary to wait for the next PTA. I can state with a great deal of confidence that had the principal asked he would have discovered that some parents thought it was a good idea and others thought it was not.

    Just taking a poll isn't the way you resolve questions like this -- you need principles. A principle principle for principals should be encouraging students to learn and think on their own.

  • On the post: Techdirt Is Now 100% SSL

    mcherm ( profile ), 05 Jun, 2014 @ 07:02am

    Thanks

    Just wanted to say, "Thank you" for doing this. I just signed up for "Techdirt Crystal Ball" ($15/year subscription) as a direct result of this choice.

  • On the post: Germany Considers Setting Up A Special Court To Determine Who Can Demand To Have Embarassing Histories Deleted From Google

    mcherm ( profile ), 30 May, 2014 @ 02:39pm

    A question about showing links to private material

    I have a question for the European court. Your ruling explains that Google must remove links to information under certain circumstances -- such as links to a newspaper article about a bankruptcy from many years ago. Is this a law only for Google, or does it apply to others as well? Does DuckDuckGo need to remove those links? What about the Internet Archive? How about the newspaper themselves... do they need to remove the links to their own articles from their archives? What if I have old paper printouts of the links (or even old newspapers sitting around with the original article)... do those need to be destroyed?

  • On the post: Hey, Idiots, Stop Swatting People

    mcherm ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2014 @ 05:00am

    SWAT'ing Actually Benefits Society

    Provocative title, I know. And I am not suggesting that ANYONE take up SWAT'ing -- it is dangerous and can be deadly. But I think it has a perverse benefit for society.

    Our police have been becoming highly militarized in recent years -- too much so in my opinion. The number of stories of police bursting in with overwhelming lethal force and applying that force indiscriminately is highly disturbing to me, and I am sure I am not alone. So long as it was only "drug dealers and other scum" who were being impacted, there was little pressure to pull back on such tactics.

    But because of SWAT'ing, police now must consider the possibility that the residents of the home or building they are assaulting may, in fact, be completely innocent. That has to impact the way that they execute their raids. It has to reduce the likelihood that they choose to fire tens of shots at someone holding what turns out to be a wallet. And THAT change is good, even while each individual incident of SWAT'ing is terrible.

  • On the post: Anne Rice Battles Mean Anonymous Amazon Trolls, Ignores Fact Many Anonymous Users Add Great Value

    mcherm ( profile ), 31 Mar, 2014 @ 06:58am

    Relevent XKCD

    https://xkcd.com/591/

  • On the post: Netflix's Move From DVDs To Streaming Shows The Massive Value Of First Sale Doctrine

    mcherm ( profile ), 13 Dec, 2010 @ 11:16am

    First Sale dead anyway... ALL movies to cost $16 million!

    Oh yes, but this morning the Supreme Court allowed (failed to overturn) a loophole: as long at the movie (or at least the disk) is manufactured outside the USA the right of first sale doesn't apply (at least in the 9th circuit).

  • On the post: Not Smart: Warner Music Issues DMCA Takedown On Larry Lessig Presentation

    mcherm ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2009 @ 08:49pm

    My opinion after viewing the presentation.

    For what it's worth, I DID just view this particular presentation, looking for possible misuses. Although I do not know what particular piece of copyrighted material Warner Music may be objecting to, I noticed there was extensive use throughout the presentation of excerpts and snippets from material. One (or more likely several) of these are likely owned by Warner Music. In each and every case, the excerpts were brief (mostly VERY brief -- rapid presentation of supporting material was used as a rhetorical device). And all were used to illustrate a point; arguable as briefly as would be sufficient to illustrate the point he was making. Thus (considering the 4 factors that define free use):

    (1) The entire presentation is offered freely on the internet; the purpose of the presentation is to educate people on Dr. Lessig's opinion on this subject (about which is an acknowledged expert). To me, that sounds non-commercial and/or educational.

    (2) I don't know the nature of the copyrighted work in question. I expect it is a snippet of a music recording.

    (3) The brief snippets are much shorter than the work as a whole.

    (4) And few are likely to use this presentation as a way of listening to the music (or viewing the video, if that's what's being objected to) because it is an inconvenient form for that purpose and because only brief excerpts are used. I doubt the distribution of this video will harm sales of the music. For some of the pieces used (especially some of the mix videos) it might *aid* sales by pointing them out to people -- but those are probably not what Warner is talking about anyhow.

    So I'd say it is clearly fair use. That's only a personal opinion -- I'm not licensed to practice law.