misterdoug 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Is It A First Amendment Violation For Public Universities To Tell Athletes They Can't Tweet?

    misterdoug ( profile ), 02 Dec, 2010 @ 12:56am

    What about prior consent?

    Excuse me - private institutions can do whatever they want? I don't see why. A university is one party in a two-party contract between itself and a student. A student enters into that contract expecting to pursue a 4-year education under conditions that are spelled out at the time of enrollment. If that student has been holding up his or her end of the deal in terms of paying tuition, maintaining minimum GPA, etc, I don't think it's a given that the university can decide to impose new conditions as radical as requiring the student to give up constitutional rights. It's reasonable to assume that many students would not have enrolled had such restrictions been in place at the time. It isn't as simple as saying students who don't like it can go somewhere else, because going somewhere else isn't that simple. Consider other rights ... if the university decided that all students who registered to vote would be expelled, I doubt that very many people would argue in its favor.

  • On the post: Are Companies Scanning Open Source Commit Logs And Patenting What They Find?

    misterdoug ( profile ), 01 Dec, 2010 @ 10:42pm

    More hypocrisy

    If patent supporters feel so strongly about the sacredness of a person's creative works, there should be some outrage against those who use the system to protect works they didn't create and didn't pay for.

  • On the post: Axl Rose Sues Activision For $20M Because Guitar Hero Shows Former GNR Guitarist Slash

    misterdoug ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2010 @ 11:28pm

    It beats working!

    He'd have to do a hell of a lot of casino shows to make $20 million.

  • On the post: PC Mag Responds To Legacy Recording Industry's 'Complaint' Letter

    misterdoug ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2010 @ 11:24pm

    Catchy name!

    From now on I'm going to call it, "the legacy recording industry." Those guys have been playing with words for a long time, for example redefining rights as property, as if by pirating the word "property" they can inherit the cultural context that belongs to genuine property. They could use a dose of their own medicine.

  • On the post: Chris Matthews Says That Pointing Out Chertoff's Conflict Of Interest Over Rapiscan TSA Scanners Is Slander?

    misterdoug ( profile ), 29 Nov, 2010 @ 09:31pm

    Who would have seen this coming?

    According to the Bush administration the Dept of Homeland Security was not going to create a new federal bureaucracy. It's job was supposed to be to coordinate the various existing federal intelligence and security organizations, to streamline communication and data sharing and minimize duplication of effort. Because conservatives are against Big Government programs that waste your tax dollars.

    The failed attempt to popularize the word "Homeland" with the American public was pathetic, but I guess it made sense. The Nazis had their Fatherland and the Soviets had their Motherland. The neocons needed a new name for the country they were trying to remake. But they really should have just called the DHS, "No Security Vendor Left Behind."

  • On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?

    misterdoug ( profile ), 27 Nov, 2010 @ 11:36am

    Re: Copyright as a "Natural right"

    Unfortunately there are many who believe that people do inherently own every original idea they express, and thereby have the natural right to control it forever. I've had discussions with people who insist that this right has existed since the dawn of time, but there was no practical reason to enforce it until the publishing industry came along. This point of view has the absolutist quality of a religious belief, which makes it difficult to discuss the subject in practical terms.

  • On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?

    misterdoug ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2010 @ 11:02am

    Re: Re: Limiting the length of copyright would solve the problem

    Unlike copyrights, trademarks aren't created automatically. They require an initial fee and a renewal at 5, 10 and every 10 years after. If the length of copyright were actually limited and someone wanted to trademark something to get around the limitation, the material would have to be lucrative enough to justify the renewal cost. This would force people to select the works they want to keep restricting, while letting orphan works fall to the public domain.

  • On the post: TSA's Failure Based On The Myth Of Perfect Security

    misterdoug ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2010 @ 10:31am

    What does "Acceptable Casualties" mean?

    The whole War On Terror was never about protecting American lives. The casualties from letting drunken idiots drive around equates to a 9/11 every couple months since about 1960. That casualty rate has been acceptable for decades, so it's pretty hard to justify going full retard because of an occasional non-drunk-related 9/11. Homeland Security's whole purpose is to terrorize the public, to convince us that our only hope for survival is to keep a certain group of people in charge and give them a free hand politically. In that light the TSA doesn't have to actually protect anyone from anything; it just has to make enough people think that's what it's doing.

  • On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?

    misterdoug ( profile ), 25 Nov, 2010 @ 05:35am

    Limiting the length of copyright would solve the problem

    The current longevity of copyright protection exists specifically for the purpose of allowing companies to control the long-term rights to an extremely tiny handful of works that produce significant commercial returns for decades -- call them Disney-class material.

    Simply reducing the longevity of copyrights to a few years would reduce the content industry's incentive to gamble huge sums of money in the hope of owning Disney-class properties. This would result in fewer blockbuster movies and a smaller branding industry -- clothes, games, Happy Meal toys...

    With those decades-long commercial opportunities destroyed, what would take their place? The answer is innovation -- whatever new business paradigms are now lying undiscovered because the copyright monster keeps gobbling up so much investment. People who want to make money don't simply dry up and blow away when a business or a whole way of doing business goes out of style. They come up with something new. That's what the free market is all about.

    Giving one business model a monopoly on how things are done suppresses innovation. Take away that monopoly by removing the legal props that are artificially holding it up, and we'll see whole new ways of running the idea business. The world will evolve, like it's supposed to. That's not socialism or repression of anyone's liberty. It's called Progress.

  • On the post: How Do You Measure The 'Benefits' Of Copyright?

    misterdoug ( profile ), 25 Nov, 2010 @ 04:36am

    Re: Only fair way, and only way possible, is to limit rewards.

    I would settle for #7.

  • On the post: What If We Gave Toddlers An 'F' In Walking?

    misterdoug ( profile ), 24 Nov, 2010 @ 01:54am

    Interesting point of view, refreshingly different from the No Curriculum Vendor Left Behind approach.

  • On the post: Newspapers Say: Shut Up And Get Scanned And Groped

    misterdoug ( profile ), 24 Nov, 2010 @ 01:50am

    It's funny to me how much crossover there is between completely trusting security experts and completely mistrusting climatology experts. I guess some experts are more expert than others.

  • On the post: Copyright Expansion Through Misinformation Has Gone On A Long Time… And It Involved Pimps & Ferrets

    misterdoug ( profile ), 21 Nov, 2010 @ 01:07am

    Misinformation is the name of the game

    The history of intellectual property is a history of misinformation. Even the basic terminology is misleading. Copyrights and patents don't confer rights, they impose restrictions. Throughout history people freely re-used anything they saw and heard, from engineering principles to music. Civilization somehow developed a vast array of technology and culture in spite of this freedom. Then patents and copyrights came along and defined this normal, customary, intuitive human behavior as Evil. Taking it a step further, the rights industry has redefined rights as property, which reduces the concept of infringement to a purse-snatching and lets them play the part of the little old lady. Predefining yourself as the injured party in a way that's highly intuitive to the average person is a lot simpler than debating a concept such as Fair Use. How can it be fair for someone to, for example, drive your car whenever they want?

    Rights and property are two different animals, or at least they used to be. I'm not even sure myself anymore.

  • On the post: UK Couple Pressure McDonalds To Remove Their Boat From TV Ad

    misterdoug ( profile ), 20 Nov, 2010 @ 07:57am

    Sounds like she wanted something, reached out and got it. Any business person would have to admire that.

  • On the post: Publicity Rights vs. Free Speech Goes To Court

    misterdoug ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2010 @ 11:47pm

    Welcome to the future

    I see this as part of an inexorable movement toward a world in which the rights to virtually every word, phrase, image, sound and idea will be owned by some legal entity, and any significant act of public expression will incur usage fees and be subject to permissions. The irony is that every step that the rights ownership industry takes in this direction is being taken in the name of Freedom.

    Freedom -- it's not just a word, it's a Slogan!

  • On the post: Ad Blindness Rules: Even Fewer People Clicking Ads

    misterdoug ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2009 @ 07:21pm

    Re:

    It depends on what you mean by "profitable." The ad-based website might not be a great business model, but you can definitely make a non-zero amount of cash with ads. On my personal website I have a lot photos of a big house remodel, which I haven't updated significantly in several years. With minimal Google ads it steadily pulls in about $50/month, which pays for my broadband access. Not exactly a business plan but I'd call it a win.

  • On the post: Finland Says 1Mb Broadband Access Is A Legal Right

    misterdoug ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2009 @ 07:13pm

    It's amazing how many Americans think of Europe as the "old world" and the rest as the "third world." In many forums the mere mention of another country being ahead of the USA in any way will be viciously attacked as misguided liberal propaganda, eliciting frothing rants about socialism and freedom.

  • On the post: Interview With William Patry: Understanding How The Copyright Debate Got Twisted

    misterdoug ( profile ), 28 Aug, 2009 @ 09:09am

    Even he uses copyright industry lingo

    As well informed as Patry is about how the copyright industry has miscast rights as property by manipulating the language, it's disappointing that even he refers to "copyright owners" rather than "copyright holders." The false idea that rights are "owned" rather than merely "held" is one way the public's perception has been changed to confuse copyrights with property, and to view infringement as stealing. Owning property is a much simpler and more natural concept than holding temporary rights that other people have conceded to you. Portraying rights as property and rights holders as owners makes it easier for the copyright industry to cast itself in the role of a little old lady fending off a purse snatcher. Nobody wants to be the purse snatcher.