melonlord 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (74) comment rss

  • On the post: Adobe Really Wants To Help Netflix With Its Dumb Password Sharing Cash Grab

    melonlord ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2022 @ 08:58am

    1. "Find another company." Netflix shows are not available anywhere else. TV and movies are not fungible goods; each is unique. There is no alternative service to Netflix with the same offerings. If Netflix becomes inaccessible to people, those people have no other ways to access its goods legally.
    2. "They get to run it as they wish." Who has ever believed this except oil magnates and robber barons? People routinely criticize businesses for their practices. Public blowback is a critical component of the free market. Consumer rejection drives innovation.
    3. "Lawlessness." First, piracy does violate copyright laws, but to classify this as "lawlessness" is hyperbole. Second, Techdirt writing an article about Netflix doing something harmful to consumers only "promotes" piracy in the same way that criticizing a grocery store for high prices "promotes" shoplifting.

  • On the post: Court To Public University: Yeah, It’s A 1st Amendment Problem When You Delete Comments You Don’t Like

    melonlord ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2022 @ 07:01am

    I've learned over the years that many, many people in positions of power have absolutely no fucking idea what the 1st amendment means, and when you tell them they can't actually punish people for saying things they don't like, they act like you just kicked their puppy. A disturbing proportion of government officials are constitutionally illiterate.

  • On the post: Adobe Really Wants To Help Netflix With Its Dumb Password Sharing Cash Grab

    melonlord ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2022 @ 06:57am

    The key error here is to treat free-riders as potential paying customers, when in reality, most of those people would simply stop using the product and turn to piracy (which is easier now than ever) if they lost free access. For example, me.

  • On the post: Court To Public University: Yeah, It’s A 1st Amendment Problem When You Delete Comments You Don’t Like

    melonlord ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2022 @ 06:49am

    note: for #1, same answer if TAMU is the one moderating the comments. if facebook, the result changes. but facebook's terms probably would do not prohibit PETA comments on a physics page.

  • On the post: Court To Public University: Yeah, It’s A 1st Amendment Problem When You Delete Comments You Don’t Like

    melonlord ( profile ), 16 Sep, 2022 @ 06:47am

    1. Yes. TAMU is a state actor. A social media account is not a limited forum like a government building where the state can restrict speech. See, e.g., the Trump Twitter account cases. Removing PETA's comments because of their content probably violates the constitution.
    2. No, because there is no state action.
    3. TAMU could argue such a restriction is not content-based, but still a potential issue as it would deprive PETA of an entire channel of speech. Regardless, I doubt this would keep PETA from just paying a student to comment through their account.
    4. Not as much, because this is arguably a content-neutral time/place/manner restriction that doesn't totally deprive anyone of the ability to speak. And sloppiness raises no 1st amendment issues because the 1st amendment doesn't obligate the government to preserve our speech.

  • On the post: Behind Washington’s Antitrust Gambit

    melonlord ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2022 @ 07:31am

    correction: I meant "is no less intellectually rigorous." woops.

  • On the post: Behind Washington’s Antitrust Gambit

    melonlord ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2022 @ 07:30am

    Your vitriol gets in the way of your argument. I generally agree that Klobuchar doesn't know what she's doing in the antitrust and tech spaces and that we shouldn't give the FTC too much discretionary power (it's troubling to imagine an FTC with such power under, say, a second Trump admin). I might even agree that this bill is a Bad Thing. But just as you warn of the dangers of an unfettered FTC, you give absolute credulity to an unfettered free market, as though businesses possess sacred knowledge of economics that regulators cannot. "Big business is inherently bad" is no more intellectually rigorous than your "if consumers pay for it, it must be good for consumers." You fight their slogans with your slogans, their maxims with your maxims, and their grievance politics with your grievance politics, leaving us readers without anything new. The Sherman Act came in 1890, the Clayton and FTC Acts in 1914, labor reforms and consumer protection in the 30s. The invisible hand has not had complete control of the economy in over a century, and for good reasons. When you call new antitrust laws "profoundly un-American," you evince a profound ignorance of American history, especially of this country's economic transformation under FDR. Your article lazily slides from criticism of this particular bill to opposition to market regulation writ large, supported only by links to articles as specious as your own and vague portents of economic doom at the hands of Lina Khan, whose views, right or wrong, you fail to actually engage with beyond alarmist name-calling.

  • On the post: Amy Klobuchar’s Link Tax Bill Put On Hold Because She Doesn’t Understand Her Own Bill And Ted Cruz Doesn’t Understand The 1st Amendment

    melonlord ( profile ), 08 Sep, 2022 @ 01:56pm

    Since her 2016 campaign Klobuchar has consistently shown that, when it comes to tech, free speech, or antitrust law, she is an idiot. Not that her idiocy even approaches Cruz's, but still.

  • On the post: Alabama Town Disbands Police Force After Racist Text Message Surfaces

    melonlord ( profile ), 01 Sep, 2022 @ 07:18am

    "All that was left was a single, now-unsupervised officer." This sounds like the start of a feel-good comedy about a young deputy who singlehandedly saves his town after the rest of the force got fired for being racist.

  • On the post: Stop Trying To Make State Action Doctrine Happen

    melonlord ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2022 @ 09:02am

    Fair enough. Perhaps I should've said "non-cishet people." Either way, this guy wants them dead or gone or both.

  • On the post: MoviePass Returns After Its Disastrous, Comical Implosion

    melonlord ( profile ), 28 Aug, 2022 @ 12:57pm

    The king is dead, long live the king.

  • On the post: Xbox Chief: Exclusives Aren’t the Future, Pay No Attention To All These Exclusives

    melonlord ( profile ), 26 Aug, 2022 @ 12:15pm

    Microsoft is cornering the streaming/subscription market with Gamepass, a far superior product to PS Plus due to Microsoft's immense resources, and swallowing up game studios with mindbogglingly huge acquisitions. Sony has responded by acquiring studios of its own, though nowhere near as many and with nowhere near as much money. Exclusives are absolutely awful for consumers and, in the long run, so is this new trend of vertical integration (even if it results in lower prices right now). Combined with the trend towards digital "ownership" that companies can snatch away at any time... just bad news all around.

  • On the post: Fucking TTAB Says FUCT Owner Can’t Trademark ‘Fuck’ Because That Word Fucking Belongs To All Of Us

    melonlord ( profile ), 25 Aug, 2022 @ 06:12am

    Love that it's always in all caps. I'm imagining the trademark attorney shouting the word FUCK at the top of his lungs every time it came up.

  • On the post: Stop Trying To Make State Action Doctrine Happen

    melonlord ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 12:01pm

    Your argument has dramatically shifted. First it was "libraries can only hold so many books"; now it's "ideology is always present in education, so it's okay when it's my ideology being forced upon students." If you want queer people to disappear, just say so. You've come pretty close elsewhere in this thread.

  • On the post: Spending Too Long Pooping At School? There’s A (Government) App For That

    melonlord ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 11:49am

    This stuff comes from administrators, departments of education, and school boards, not educators.

  • On the post: Stop Trying To Make State Action Doctrine Happen

    melonlord ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 11:00am

    You're absolutely right, but I always try to make them say it out loud.

  • On the post: Spending Too Long Pooping At School? There’s A (Government) App For That

    melonlord ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 10:59am

    Schools are the nurseries of democracy, and if students don't learn democratic values in schools, then democracy as a whole will eventually begin to fail. There is a thick, obvious, clear line between schools taking necessary steps to ensure students receive an education and schools becoming fascistic panopticons. Hormone tests, strip and cavity searches, and spyware cross that line hard. Combined with the recent surge in ideological curriculum design and mass book banning, students these days are most certainly not learning democratic values.

  • On the post: Stop Trying To Make State Action Doctrine Happen

    melonlord ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 08:21am

    Has it occurred to you that by restricting libraries to books "align[ed] with the school's curriculum" -- and I remind you that the state department of education, a political entity, sets the curriculum (as my home state Florida has so vividly demonstrated in recent months) -- you're simply sneaking ideology in through the back door?

  • On the post: HBO Max And Sesame Street Highlight The Stupidity Of Mindless Media Megamergers

    melonlord ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 06:47am

    Hey guys, I keep trying to log in to CNN+ and the app won't open. Any help?

  • On the post: National Poll Shows Nothing More Than The People Likely To Be Angered By The FBI’s Raid On Trump’s Home Were Angered By It

    melonlord ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2022 @ 02:22pm

    There are declassification procedures and packing sensitive papers into boxes and taking them to Florida probably does not automatically declassify them. And documents relating to nuclear weapons have a special classification that even a sitting president cannot remove on their own initiative. I expect Trump to make exactly your argument, but it is a novel theory and very, very far from a legal certainty.

Next >>