misterdoug 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (98) comment rss

  • On the post: Study Shows That Piracy Has Not Resulted In A Decrease Of Quality New Music

    misterdoug ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2011 @ 01:15am

    Re: Jamendo

    Jamendo rocks, and I believe it's a model of the future of music. More and more musicians are realizing that they don't need a record contract to get their music in front of people, get radio airplay and generate a following. But it will still be decades before the record industry dies out as an anachronism. The amount of good quality free material essentially has to swamp the backlog of material controlled by record companies, which is HUGE. The RIAA won't go away until its share of people's attention span is insufficient to support staying in business.

  • On the post: Study Shows That Piracy Has Not Resulted In A Decrease Of Quality New Music

    misterdoug ( profile ), 27 Mar, 2011 @ 12:07am

    Re: Re: Re: Good point!

    He's obviously abandoned the standard of causality he wanted others to measure up to. The sad thing is that the quality of his reasoning does measure up to that of the average American voter, which is why this country is circling the drain.
    On one hand we have drooling dittoheads under the illusion that throwing everybody they disagree with in jail will somehow bring back America's greatness, sitting on their couches watching their jobs get exported to countries where people make zero dollars an hour, and blaming all problems on unions, gays, illegal aliens and liberal government, while Rupert Murdoch lights a cigar with their paychecks. On the other hand we have the so-called liberals in Congress who have failed to support either their constituents or their president, instead keeping their financial sponsors happy by doing nothing, and the liberal voters who put them in office sitting patiently waiting for something to change.
    If the founding fathers woke up and saw the mess we've made of the nation they left us, I think they would probably want to go to war with it.

  • On the post: Samsung Hires 'Actors' To Pretend To Be Happy Galaxy Tab Testers?

    misterdoug ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2011 @ 01:17am

    Intrepid blogger Harry McCracken thought the interviews felt a bit off... and a bit too full of corporate marketing-speak.

    I know the feeling... kind of like listening to one down-home average American after another on Fox News saying the same things over and over. Just plain-talkin' grassroots folks speakin' their minds, right off the ol' teleprompter.

  • On the post: Study Shows That Piracy Has Not Resulted In A Decrease Of Quality New Music

    misterdoug ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2011 @ 01:09am

    Re: bleh

    Personally I don't find the quality of music better at all. I was much happier with the quality when major labels were in full force

    I kind of felt the same way until I started listening to some non-commercial radio stations that play a lot of local bands and indies. For a while it just sounded unfamiliar and not that great, but I stuck with it for a couple months and now listening to my former favorite stations gives me a feeling that they play the same old crap over and over. There's a lot of good music out there that isn't on 80,000-watt stations.

  • On the post: Study Shows That Piracy Has Not Resulted In A Decrease Of Quality New Music

    misterdoug ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2011 @ 12:51am

    Good point!

    You're right. There's no evidence that 9/11 decreased the quality of new music. So if anyone made the claim that we need tighter security and increased anti-terrorism laws to preserve the quality of music, they would be wrong. It follows that when the recording industry claims we need stricter copyright enforcement to preserve the quality of music, they are also wrong. I'm glad we agree on that.

  • On the post: NYTimes Columnists Telling Readers How To Get Around The Paywall

    misterdoug ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2011 @ 03:33pm

    They're in a bid alright

    As newspapers have been forced to turn to the web, most of them seem to think of it as the electronic version of a printing press, which is kind of like thinking of the internal combustion engine as a way to make it easier for horses to pull wagons. It's going to take quite a few years (and mainly a lot of obituaries) before we stop trying to force the internet to conform to traditional business models.

    There's an old army saying -- when the map and terrain disagree, trust the terrain.

  • On the post: How Lawyers For Settlers Of Catan Abuse IP Law To Take Down Perfectly Legal Competitors

    misterdoug ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2011 @ 02:46pm

    Re: If it was YOUR game you wouldn't want others stealing it

    Maybe you read a different article. The one I read was about selling game pieces that can be used to play a certain game, not about copying the game itself. Inventing the game of tennis doesn't entitle us to sue people for making tennis shoes, giving tennis lessons, writing tennis books, drawing a picture of someone playing tennis, etc.

    Unfortunately the law does allow us to make all kinds of litigious threats to which other people must respond, with the hope of depleting their resources to the point where they give up in spite of having done nothing wrong. It's trial by combat, we just don't call it that.

  • On the post: Should Everyone Who Uses A Phone Or A Computer As Part Of A Crime Get A Longer Sentence?

    misterdoug ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2011 @ 02:14pm

    Obviously this judge isn't Dutch

    The Dutch judge who thinks hacking a wifi router isn't hacking because it isn't a computer is living in a whole different world.

  • On the post: It May Take Up To 10,000 Years Before We Finally Get Rid Of 'Up To' Language In Broadband Marketing

    misterdoug ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2011 @ 02:05pm

    Fair is fair!

    If the service contract is for "up to" a certain amount of product, shouldn't the price be "up to" $xx/month?

  • On the post: Dutch Court Says Breaking Into An Encrypted WiFi Router To Use The Connection Is Legal

    misterdoug ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2011 @ 01:58pm

    Contrast to the U.S.

    This is in stark contrast to the law in the United States, where we like to make it illegal to discuss circumvention techniques because then somebody might use them for piracy.

  • On the post: Dutch Court Says Breaking Into An Encrypted WiFi Router To Use The Connection Is Legal

    misterdoug ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2011 @ 01:52pm

    Just a technicality

    It's as if the law defined "lock" as a cyindrical mechanism with a keyhole, forgetting to include combination locks, cardkey locks, etc, and the judge was being overly literal. This shouldn't be too hard for legislators to fix with a little clarification, but I'm susprised nobody pointed out to the judge that routers actually do run software and store information (passwords, configuration, etc). Seems like a no-brainer to prove that they are computers.

  • On the post: Paul Vixie Explains Why COICA Is A Really Dumb Idea

    misterdoug ( profile ), 21 Mar, 2011 @ 01:36pm

    Same as the DMCA

    Running an alternative DNS network would violate the intent of COICA. The solution that follows the DMCA pattern would be to criminalize alternative DNS networks. Is that any more far-fetched than criminalizing t-shirts with DeCSS code on them?

    The fragility of the system isn't of any concern to Congress. If their financial sponsors have a door with a lock that is too easy to pick, Congress makes it illegal to stand on the sidewalk in front of the door. When someone figures out a way to pick the lock from across the street, Congress makes it illegal to be across the street. The last thing they'll do is force the locksmiths to make a lock that actually works.

  • On the post: Feature Film Made In GTA IV

    misterdoug ( profile ), 29 Jan, 2011 @ 06:42pm

    Takes time for paradigms to change

    Some people say free entertainment will never eliminate movie studios and record companies because the quality of the material will never measure up. That reasoning didn't save ocean liners when trans-Atlantic air travel came along. But suppose steamship lines and railroads had acquired control over travel the way entertainment companies are now trying to get control of the Internet. We could be living in a world where few people questioned the idea that they had to travel by ship or train. They would be secure in the belief that airplanes were only safe for cargo, and scientists and engineers who argued otherwise would be branded as Liberal Atheists trying to lead us to One World Government. I'm sure Fox News could muster up a stable of experts who could prove with simple diagrams and good ole common sense that moving faster than 100 mph would kill you.

    Conventional Wisdom. It's what's for dinner!

  • On the post: Government Putting Quite A Lot Of Effort Into Tracking Down 'Anonymous'

    misterdoug ( profile ), 29 Jan, 2011 @ 05:38pm

    Re: sit in vs DDOS

    I've been having an online sit-in all day. In fact I've been sitting here online way too long. Time to stretch!

  • On the post: Government Putting Quite A Lot Of Effort Into Tracking Down 'Anonymous'

    misterdoug ( profile ), 29 Jan, 2011 @ 05:37pm

    Re: Re:

    Add Egypt to that list.

    It's hopeless to try to reason with people whose solution to every problem is that somebody just needs a good whippin'. If reality turns out to be more complicated than their beliefs, they'll fault reality rather than adjust their beliefs. Yet at the same time they rant about personal responsibility...

  • On the post: How Facebook Used White Space To Crush Myspace

    misterdoug ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2011 @ 02:11pm

    I blame Murdoch

    Rupert Murdoch runs News Corp like a William Randolph Hearst or a Henry Ford. It's a very traditional 1930s-style company, with one man at the top determining all policy and making all major decisions. As long as that man is able to adapt to changing conditions everything is fine and he's a hero. But when he finally runs out of luck and his response is to blame the rest of the world, it's called "the end of an era."

  • On the post: RIAA Threatening ICANN About .music; Claiming It Will Be Used To Infringe

    misterdoug ( profile ), 19 Jan, 2011 @ 01:48pm

    Latest news!

    RIAA requests banning everything!

    In a startling announcement today RIAA spokesman Smoky McCracken requested that everything be banned. "Absolutely anything can be used to infringe our properties," McCracken said. "Without record companies there would be no music, and without music, life itself would not exist. It's vital to the survival of the human race that everything be banned, unless we already own it."

  • On the post: Senator Wyden Calls Out Content Companies For Wanting To Censor The Internet

    misterdoug ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2011 @ 10:29pm

    Re: Why troll here?

    It's the internets - any political topic is an automatic troll magnet.

  • On the post: Senator Wyden Calls Out Content Companies For Wanting To Censor The Internet

    misterdoug ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2011 @ 10:21pm

    Due Process

    You mean like Congress extending the length of copyright because a Disney copyright is about to expire? Yeah, that's due process.

    You mean the law that placed every audio recording made before 1972 under copyright until 2087, including material that had already been public domain for many years? Sure, due process again.

    You mean cutting text from MPAA emails and pasting it directly into legislation, complete with spelling errors? Yep, due process!

    If you want to look for a lack of due process, start with Congress.

  • On the post: Senator Wyden Calls Out Content Companies For Wanting To Censor The Internet

    misterdoug ( profile ), 18 Jan, 2011 @ 10:06pm

    Re:

    If foreign counterfeiting of products like Nike shoes drains [this much money] out of the U.S. economy, and industrial outsourcing by those same companies drains off [*** THIS *** MUCH *** MONEY] I can certainly see why we would want to focus on the knockoffs.

Next >>