morganwick 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (191)

• On the post: Congress’ Kids Online Safety Act Puts Kids At Risk Through Fuzzy Language

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 09 Sep, 2022 @ 01:07am

  Being trans has been called a mental health disorder, and this bill says platforms are required to protect minors from that.

  Excuse me? The bill says platforms are required to protect children from "mental health disorders"? The best possible interpretation I have of this sentence is that they're required to protect children from people with mental disorders, and that still says some bad things about how we treat mental health in this country.

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

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 24 Aug, 2022 @ 11:33pm

  Here's the thing, though. Yes, in terms of creating original content, HBO should have focused on one or two series at a time and focused on making those things as good as possible. But quantity of content has been the bread and butter of streaming services ever since people started noticing that Netflix offered so much content they didn't really need a subscription to cable TV. People come for the premium original content but they stay for the tonnage of library content you have to offer, and considering the pricing structure most of these streaming services have the latter is arguably more important. Having a bunch of crap doesn't have to distract from the gems in your library if you have a good algorithm that leads people to the gems. So for HBO to dump old episodes of Sesame Street and a bunch of other shows feels penny wise and pound foolish. It objectively makes the service worse. HBO was the thing that Netflix famously tried to become before HBO could become Netflix, and part of that was their critically-acclaimed original content, but part of it was also their library of movies from multiple sources. HBO was the place other studios sold to, Warner Bros wasn't the one selling to others, yet that's now the direction WBD seems to be moving in. I thought Warner Bros was better positioned than any legacy media company not named Disney for the streaming era, but they seem to be throwing that away. It's now very possible Peacock or Paramount+ outlives any incarnation of HBO Max, and if that's the case the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger could go down as one of the most catastrophic in media if not business history. As incompetent as AT&T were in running WarnerMedia, they might actually be in worse shape now.

• On the post: Why Is Media Lamenting Disney’s ‘Loss’ Of Copyright Instead Of Celebrating The Public Domain?

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 27 Jul, 2022 @ 02:55pm

  Why Is Media Lamenting Disney’s ‘Loss’ Of Copyright Instead Of Celebrating The Public Domain?

  Well, how many of those media outlets are owned by companies that get to lock up intellectual property indefinitely as long as Disney gets to keep extending copyright terms? That might be your answer.

• On the post: Ridiculous Republican Senators Introduce Law To Say Political Emails Can’t Be Filtered As Spam

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 16 Jun, 2022 @ 10:55am

  I can't wait to see Democrats flood everyone's inbox multiple times a day and see how long Republican support for this lasts...

• On the post: John Oliver’s Big Whiff: Just Because You Agree There’s A Problem, Doesn’t Mean That This Is The Right Solution

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2022 @ 04:06pm

  maybe it would be beneficial to step back a little, and refocus on the fact that US is already terribly behind EU on big tech regulation.

  Or looked at another way, the EU is behind the US on not over-reaching and producing counterproductive outcomes in regulating tech.

• On the post: John Oliver’s Big Whiff: Just Because You Agree There’s A Problem, Doesn’t Mean That This Is The Right Solution

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 15 Jun, 2022 @ 04:05pm

  I wonder whether Oliver's employer backs these bills...

• On the post: Democrats Need To Get Their Head Out Of The Sand: The Only Reason GOP Is Supporting Their Antitrust Bills Is To Force Companies To Host Disinfo

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 09 Jun, 2022 @ 04:22pm

  I don't want to think Democrats secretly want Republicans to win because fascism is perceived to be better for their true bosses than actually working for ordinary people, but they don't make it easy sometimes.

• On the post: Academic Paper Shows How Badly The Mainstream Media Misled You About Section 230

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 07 Jun, 2022 @ 06:58pm

  Or they could have just calculated the percentages for each paper because that would be the more interesting and relevant number than "stories that treat the impacts of 230 negatively in the Wall Street Journal as a percentage of stories talking about the impact of 230 across both papers".

• On the post: Marjorie Taylor Greene Has A Bill To Burden Elon Musk’s Twitter With An Avalanche Of Frivolous Lawsuits

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 02 May, 2022 @ 08:53am

  I almost wonder if the real endgame is to try and stuff the genie back in the bottle and go back to the days when big corporations were the sole gatekeepers of what messages could get out there, because your second scenario is the only one that leaves any user-generated content out there at all, meaning any remaining sites that allow user-generated content would essentially become 4chan.

• On the post: Medical, Home Alarm Industries Warn Of Major Outages As AT&T Shuts Down 3G Network

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2022 @ 02:23pm

  So the alarm industry is asking both the FCC and AT&T for a little more time, as well as some help migrating existing home security gear temporarily on to T-Mobile's 3G network so things don't fall apart when AT&T shuts down its 3G network (currently scheduled for February 22).

  date of post: February 23

  Man, Techdirt is such a great resource for staying on the cutting edge of tech policy news.

• On the post: The GOP Knows That The Dem's Antitrust Efforts Have A Content Moderation Trojan Horse; Why Don't The Dems?

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 23 Feb, 2022 @ 02:19pm

  If Democrats wanted to raise suspicions among their own base that they're only interested in presenting the appearance of opposition to Republican policies, but are really working hand-in-hand with them to ensure the hegemony of the 1%, it'd be hard to come up with a course of action that'd be more effective...

• On the post: Danish Court Confirms Insane 'Little Mermaid' Copyright Ruling Against Newspaper Over Cartoon

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 12 Feb, 2022 @ 05:54pm

  Why do I suspect it's the lawyers that are driving this and that will see most of the money...

• On the post: Totally Bogus DMCA Takedowns From Giant Publishers Completely Nuke Book Review Blog Off The Internet

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2022 @ 03:32pm

  perhaps we should be looking at moving copyright in the other direction, so that these "mistakes" can't happen any more. Perhaps copyright law shouldn't allow the shutting down of a website based on totally bogus accusations from an automated spammer hired by the largest publishers in the world, where no one cares about what they might actually be taking down?

  Silly rabbit, that would help the little people and make things marginally less convenient for big companies, so it'll never happen in the United States.

• On the post: UEFA DMCA Blitz Has Kept A Traditional TV Station Delisted In Google For Months

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2021 @ 02:10am

  There are two ways to go about using the DMCA as a content provider in order to keep copyright infringement at bay: the right and good way, or the bad and lazy way. The right and good way is to use DMCA takedown requests sparingly, to be very targeted in their use, and to do some minor legwork to ensure that the target is in fact an infringing actor.

  So long as there are no penalties for using takedown requests willy-nilly, untargeted, and against innocent parties, the "right and good way" is in reality the wrong and dumb way that wastes effort for no good reason. Why go to the effort of actually finding out who the infringers are and sending specific takedown requests against specific infringers when you can just rev up an algorithm to find anything that might kinda sorta look like infringement if you look at a particular pixel or word and flood the zone with takedown requests?

• On the post: Everything You Know About Section 230 Is Wrong (But Why?)

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2021 @ 02:25am

  Re: 'Sure you have that right, but can you afford to use it?'

  Unfortunately, there are far too many areas where people have "rights" they can't afford to exercise. That tech companies have 230 dating from a time they were a lot smaller than now is a minor miracle.

• On the post: Everything You Know About Section 230 Is Wrong (But Why?)

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2021 @ 02:22am

  Re:

  I get the sense conservatives' answer to your second question might not be what you would think.

• On the post: Everything You Know About Section 230 Is Wrong (But Why?)

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 30 Oct, 2021 @ 02:20am

  Re:

  I think we know where this is headed.

• On the post: Trump Announces His Own Social Network, 'Truth Social,' Which Says It Can Kick Off Users For Any Reason (And Already Is)

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2021 @ 06:32am

  Anyone want to bet that when Trump and his cultists spew lies that won't be considered "misleading other users" but when mainstream media sources post on there and left-wing trolls try to spread some actual truth to counteract the lies it will be?

• On the post: Facebook Banning & Threatening People For Making Facebook Better Is Everything That's Wrong With Facebook

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 13 Oct, 2021 @ 07:55am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  For one thing, they tend to hold up Citizens United as the problem with corporate personhood, when not only did that case not actually have anything to do with corporate personhood, taking it seriously might lead to less dumb Supreme Court decisions: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/03/corporations-are-people-and-thats-why-hobby-lobby-should-lose-at-the-supreme-court

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  morganwick ( profile ), 10 Oct, 2021 @ 11:58pm

  What's especially funny is that the guy who spewed out that COVID nonsense prefaced his post with "here's your most insightful comment for next week". Well, it did come from the ensuing thread...

Next >>