Free Capitalist 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Lobbying Group Issues Takedown For Parody Political Ads By Student Group

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2010 @ 10:35am

    Re:

    They should be creating at least SOME of their own content

    You're right... most writers get way too much credit than they deserve. We need to ignore them more.

  • On the post: Kindle To Let You Lend Books, Just Like A Real Book… Except Not

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2010 @ 09:45am

    Re: soul-deadening to the users

    [I have not yet begun to troll.]


    Welcome back, you. Did you get that dribble on your chin cleaned up yet?

  • On the post: Hadopi Already Up To Sending Out 25,000 'First Strike' Notices Per Day

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2010 @ 09:32am

    Re: Re:

    Since the law in France was passed filesharing grew 3% already

    Do you have a source for this? I'm not being snarky, I'd actually like to see the data.

    Mike did a little writeup on just that a few months ago.

  • On the post: Hadopi Already Up To Sending Out 25,000 'First Strike' Notices Per Day

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2010 @ 09:25am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: France, the country full of outlaws?

    And hell, if those fail, we'll go back to Sneakernets.

    Home taping could still kill the music industry if we all try hard enough.

  • On the post: Lobbying Group Issues Takedown For Parody Political Ads By Student Group

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2010 @ 09:22am

    Re: Civil Rights

    It would be nice to bring honesty in advertising to the justice system.

    Got a problem with an irrevocable constitutional right? "There's a precedent for that." (TM)

  • On the post: Hadopi Already Up To Sending Out 25,000 'First Strike' Notices Per Day

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2010 @ 08:21am

    Re: Re: 50K angry customers a day

    You've got a little mayonnaise on your chin... oh... that's.... not mayonnaise.

  • On the post: Hadopi Already Up To Sending Out 25,000 'First Strike' Notices Per Day

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2010 @ 08:02am

    Burden of Poof....

    Hadopi Already Up To Sending Out 25,000 'First Strike' Notices Per Day

    Anyone else have a suspicion that french World of Warcraft players and everyone else "sharing" any torrents whatsoever are getting these notices? I'm curious to see how this plays out in the next six months.

    At least when they had the burden of proof to make a civil case, the industry reps had to try to correlate a particular seeded torrent with a copyrighted work.

    With no burden of proof whatsoever, what is the incentive to verify anything?

  • On the post: US Basically Says It'll Ignore Anything In ACTA That It Doesn't Like… So How About Everyone Else?

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2010 @ 07:47am

    Would it be technically possible for them to shove their ACTA up their COICA and implode into an any universe other than ours?

  • On the post: MPAA Calls Censorship Of Websites 'Forward Looking'

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2010 @ 01:32pm

    It's OK to censor, they're protecting artists and consumers of C-quality A-price movies everywhere.

    Already wrote my Senators about the COICA sham. I think I'll call next...

  • On the post: Chilean Miner Copyrights Note Announcing Trapped Miners Were OK

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2010 @ 11:56am

    Why does everyone have to rip on the Chilean pension plans?

    Here, have a cookie.

  • On the post: The New Children's Health Plan Is Videogames?

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2010 @ 01:49pm

    Re: Re: Re: Sleazy???

    Well, once they lose enough money they can neither help people live healthy lives nor make their shareholders happy.

    When they start actually losing money, could you stop by and let us know/share the balance sheets? That would be great!

    These companies are not free market, and have not been since the 1950's. They basically are our health care system, and lock out doctors who would practice free market healing, or even practice medicine for that matter.

    Point in case: Diabetes is one of the top health issues in the U.S. today. Why on Earth would they stop paying for an insulin resist tests, which can catch a danger situation before it turns into pre Diabetes. This is not health care, this is market control -- as in controlling the number of living policy holders in any given year.

  • On the post: Comic Book 'Pirated' On 4Chan, Author Joins Discussion… Watches Sales Soar

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2010 @ 01:32pm

    Re: Satistically possible, but highly improbable

    True there is a lot of noise on the Internet. But let me rephrase that for you.

    "Worked for him, wouldn't work for anyone else."

    The nice thing is anyone can play that lotto (and let's be honest, talent will get picked up more often than crap like I post), no industry ticket required.

  • On the post: The New Children's Health Plan Is Videogames?

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2010 @ 12:33pm

    No Surprises There...

    While I am reticent to place blame on any one person, or even "party", we can expect to see a lot more bad behavior by health insurance companies. In the "Health Care Reform" we now have, health insurance companies hit the jackpot they have been after for decades.

    They now have a market of 280 million plus legally captive customers.

    They seem to have no restrictions on premium increases for people who already have health care. Anyone else get an 80% increase in premiums for next year? Yeah, that's not even a so-called 'luxury' plan. For many working families reduced coverage is now the only option.

    People who have no permanent job and cannot afford health insurance will have to pay a statutory fine for non-participation in mandatory health care. These fines will no doubt get funneled back into the ongoing bailout of our new health insurance overlords.

    Just don't .. get.. sick.

  • On the post: Why Would Attorney General Eric Holder Cite Debunked Stats About 'Piracy'?

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2010 @ 12:17pm

    I'm surprised he has time to front for IP industries with the ongoing DoJ full-press operations in the Roger Clemens steroid case. That evil-doer has our DoJ and Congress in a battle that's gone all quagmire, and they are going to need more resources.

    Missing kids and so-called "Constitutional rights" can clearly wait in triage with the rest of us tax paying beggars.

  • On the post: Viacom Hires Former Solicitor General For YouTube Appeal

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2010 @ 08:05am

    Re:

    One would think that a lawsuit being patently frivolous or obviously social engineering would be enough to deny an appeal. However in practice that standard doesn't seem to hold for corporations. Corporations are treated like individuals only when the rights and treatment of an individual would be better than the advantage of having very deep pockets.

  • On the post: When A Humor Site Understands The Implications Of Abundance Better Than The 'Experts'…

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2010 @ 04:01pm

    Re: Re: Ugly... but ....

    But apparently, I'm humor-impaired.

    Not so quick there... I really cannot be the judge of that, as the record here by a wide margin shows I'm the one who is humor impaired (Just ask DH). And a bit ... well... obvious.

    For real, though, I feel I've learned quite a few things here thanks to you and the better portion of the community around your site. Thanks!

  • On the post: When A Humor Site Understands The Implications Of Abundance Better Than The 'Experts'…

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2010 @ 01:53pm

    Ugly... but ....

    what could I ever do to get that sort of traffic to an article on the economics of abundance and scarcity?

    You may have overstated the traffic Cracked.com gets by a smidge, but that is a very good question to pose to yourselves.

    Here are my own opinions on the popularity disparity:
    1) Humor is a very, very broad market. Perhaps especially in hard times people need to break up the worry, stress and for many monotony of survival. Additionally, Cracked does have a lot of subjects they rip on, which might increase the incidental discoveries people make when they see something linked that they are personally interested in.

    2) Intellectually, Cracked is a "little" less challenging than Techdirt. I'm not going to hit this one too hard, but lots of people don't want to learn, and many others are too beleaguered to think of anything outside of their own worries... see #1. You also have a somewhat acerbic keyboard, while many people are looking for the Absurdic angle.

    3) IMO, the site is a long way from its long past glory, but there seems to be a Fark - Digg connection. When you get Farked every day, more people seem to start Digging you. This may seem illogical, as Cracked seems to get way more traffic than Fark, but I think the visitor behavior at Fark has something to do with it. Either way, Cracked gets linked in more places in large part due to #1. Humor is viral by its genetics, and always has been.

    4) Politics can be really, really stupid. We have a flooded market of commentary, and with all this information, lots of people want to pick a ticket and stick with it, rather than have to digest new information or make critical analyses of things they thought they had figured out. It's the reason political entertainment like Glen Beck and Snookie is so popular today.

    OK TL;DR or edit myself.

    Mike, on the whole I really like what you are doing. You are in a fairly different market than Cracked. Do not go and change the tenants of what you are trying to accomplish. Maybe a drop-in humorist would be an enjoyable thing, but stay focused. We need it.

    Go get Farked or buy the NY Times or something.

  • On the post: Pilot Not Allowed Through Security After He Refuses 'Naked' Backscatter Scan

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2010 @ 12:29pm

    Re:

    Whining about the TSA won't stop necessary change.

    You are correct. The airline industry was way overdue for a massive downward correction in valuation.

  • On the post: Broadway Actor Sues To Find Out Anonymous Tweeter Who Says He Has Crabs

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2010 @ 09:19am

    Re: Re: Re: Curious...

    First of all, I'm pretty sure that getting a subpoena for a plaintiff's medical records in a defamation suit is going to be damn near impossible.

    I'll bet you're right on that count. The only thing is, that since this guy's got crabs... well how is that defamation?
    defamation - a false accusation of an offense or a malicious misrepresentation of someone's words or actions

    Revealing factual privileged medical information might be an offense of its own, but to my untrained mind it is not defamation.
    Innocent until proven cheeky, I guess.

  • On the post: Cyberwar Hype Leaps To The UK, While Electric Grid Expert Calls Claims Of Attacks 'Hooey'

    Free Capitalist ( profile ), 20 Oct, 2010 @ 08:35am

    Re: Re: Re:

    The slammer worm is not impressed by your "not directly connected to the Internet".

    Gonna have to grammar nazi you on this one a little bit.

    I appreciate the severity of that hack, but it is somewhat non-sequitur to a companies power-grid management system. This was a system, stupidly connected to a network that connects to the Internet, firewall or no, that monitored safety metrics around the nuclear reaction, not power distribution.

    Sure, make 'em blind to a problem and they might have blown Ohio sky high, but the rest of the grid would have gone hydro.

    But as I said before, I do not know if any power company's grid management systems are exposed similarly or not. I just think the issue is "a little" more publicly hyped than is necessary. Audit compliance with Security policy, yes. Start a whole new branch of government to deal with it? No.

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