Peet McKimmie 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: A Timeline Of How The Entertainment Industry Made The File Sharing Issue Much Worse For Itself

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 26 Jun, 2010 @ 04:21pm

    Re: Re:

    "Cameras in your house"... Have you given any thought to these new "gestural interfaces" that are supposed to replace games controllers and remote controls? How do they work? Why, by putting a camera in your house, usually attached to a device connected directly to the web. What could possibly go wrong...?

  • On the post: A Timeline Of How The Entertainment Industry Made The File Sharing Issue Much Worse For Itself

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 26 Jun, 2010 @ 04:12pm

    Re:

    And, of course, it'll all turn out to be Google's fault.

    http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html

  • On the post: Scott Adams: The Economic Value Of Content Is Going To Zero, But Maybe It's Okay

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 03 Jun, 2010 @ 10:38am

    Re:

    For years there have been author-destroying institutions in nearly every city in America. They allow anyone to go in and read any copyright-protected book they want without ANY compensation going to the author. Hundreds, if not thousands of people will read the book, and all the author gets is the pittance they receive for the inital sale of the book to the institution.


    If you mean "Libraries", authors do get paid for books borrowed. Here's the UK scheme, but the US has a similar one*: http://www.plr.uk.com/mediaCentre/publications/pdfPublications/plrInTheUk.pdf

    (*I just can't remember the name of the US scheme to Google for it...)

  • On the post: Who Needs A SarcMark When Your Computer Can Just Tell You When Someone's Being Sarcastic?

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 21 May, 2010 @ 05:54am

    Re:

    AFAIK it is intended for use when aggregating "Customer reviews" on sites such as Amazon, where a clearly sarcastic comment will often show up as a 5-star review to a search spider.

  • On the post: Is Just Talking About Infringing Content Infringing?

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 01 May, 2010 @ 02:28am

    Re:

    I publish a paper listing the best prostitutes and where to find them?


    That would be legal in the UK; we have a few websites rating prostitutes. As long as they are clearly independent sites doing the rating they're breaking no laws. e.g. http://www.punternet.com

    Give directions to crack houses?


    That would be great! Just as long as you were obliged to keep the info up-to-date. When they shut down the crack house in the flat upstairs from me I still had more than six months of their customers buzzing my door to be let in to the building. If they could have just checked a website it would have saved me a *ton* of hassle.

    Have a website detailing all of the criminal services available in town and where to get them?


    I'm sure the Police would like that.

  • On the post: Is Just Talking About Infringing Content Infringing?

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 01 May, 2010 @ 02:14am

    Re: Re: Re: FUCK OFF COPYRIGHT

    I only saw the pilot 3-parter. It was "Hamish MacBeth in Space", but with fewer laughs. I loved the original SG-1, and I just about tolerated "Atlantis", but this was a step too far. :-/

  • On the post: Is Just Talking About Infringing Content Infringing?

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2010 @ 05:04am

    Re: FUCK OFF COPYRIGHT

    tomorrow ill grab star gate universe

    Ah. The insanity defense.

  • On the post: Is Just Talking About Infringing Content Infringing?

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 30 Apr, 2010 @ 02:17am

    It's an American thing

    A long time ago I was involved in the startup of a website rating website called "Zoom.com". The idea was that peopl;e would take charge of a particular category or categories and publish reviews of and links to websites that were good examples of content within that category.

    For the first eight months or so it was very good, then it was bought over by a big American company. They went through the database deleting sites willy-nilly because those sites said something that might "encourage illegal activity" in the US.

    I eventually dropped all association with them after a gardening site, rated top for information on tomato growing, was dropped (there was no appeals process) because someone in the comments section had suggested that the site might be useful to cannabis growers. At about the same time they introduced a "verification process" for volunteers where we had to go down a list of 20 statements and check the ones that would lead to a site being rejected. If we got it wrong our submission privileges were suspended for a week and then we had to take the test again.

    The problem was that only sites that might encourage activities that were illegal in America were being targeted. This started out as a multi-national web project, but the parochial views of the company that took it over just ruined it.

  • On the post: Mitch Wagner Asks About Ethics Of Downloading Media You Already Paid For

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2010 @ 02:48am

    MP3s

    When AllOfMP3.com was still trading, I took the opportunity to download the whole of my vinyl collection as MP3s for 10p a track. This seemed fair, as I had already paid for the right to listen to the music, and a small percentage of that 10p was going back to the record companies. In effect, I was paying someone else to digitise "my" music for me, using better hardware than I could afford.

    If I'd had to buy it from iTunes and the like it would have been cheaper to replace my broken turntable.

  • On the post: Confused Users Keep Racking Up Ridiculous 3G Bills, Wireless Carriers Keep Helping Them

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 25 Apr, 2010 @ 12:43am

    Typo

    "Except as a consumer, it's his responsibility to read the find print on his contract ..." It's a bit rich complaining that people don't read the screenfuls of legalese that comes with a product when you don't even read your own article properly.

  • On the post: Infographic Does A Great Job Misrepresenting Opportunities Of The Digital Era

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 15 Apr, 2010 @ 02:17am

    "Sales to earn minimum wage"

    This is meaningless unless you specify a period. Is it sales per week? Per month? Per year? Over the artist's lifetime?

  • On the post: Once Again, For The 2012 Olympics, Police Get Special Powers To Enter Homes And Remove Signage

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 30 Mar, 2010 @ 12:15am

    "Marketing" signs

    So "non-marketing" signs, such as "All advertisers are liars" would be OK, then?

  • On the post: Failed Filmmakers Pretend Piracy Group 'Stole' Film To Try To Get Publicity

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 25 Mar, 2010 @ 04:10am

    Re: Re: The facts

    I was WONDERING about THAT too.

  • On the post: BBC Link Policy: We Want To Send A Lot Of Traffic To Other Sites

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2010 @ 03:32pm

    I'm a regular BBC user...

    The problem is that the BBC are looking for excuses to shut down websites, particularly their messageboards. When, say, three or four years ago, a news story might point to a BBC messageboard for further discussion, now it'll point to Facebook or Twitter. Their long term goal is to shut down their messageboards and replace them with "Blogs" where only BBC employees can start a thread, so only things they officially sanction can be discussed.

  • On the post: Canon Becomes The Online Equivalent Of Madonna Or Prince, Becoming The First Single Word Domain Holder

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 19 Mar, 2010 @ 09:02am

    "It shouldn't be hard for someone to start their own DNS server"

    "Private" DNS servers have been around forever. I was registered to a Hack0r(sic) one back in 2000. All it did was (allegedly) to add their own "Warez" sites under a .warez TLD, but as it transpired they were happily redirecting all the major banking websites to early phishing scams.

    Stick to Google (8.8.8.8) or OpenDNS. (208.67.222.222)

  • On the post: Could Looking At London's 2012 Olympics Logo Land People In Prison?

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 19 Feb, 2010 @ 03:29pm

    Re: Not the first problem

    When it was first launched, the only colour you ever saw it in was yellow. Then the Simpsons meme was publicised and now yellow's about the only colour you don't see it in.

  • On the post: Google Music Blog Mess Highlights Why Three Strikes Will Not Work

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 14 Feb, 2010 @ 12:58am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Chilling Effects

    The problem, as I see it, is that a Blogger who has been sent an MP3 music track to feature on their blog may have nothing more than the email it came attached to, which wouldn't stand as a "Contract" in a court of law. As with a shrinkwrap license, it would only gain the status of a "contract" if the end user had to sign something physical to show they had accepted the terms.

    So I still contend that in these circumstances the permission would be revocable.

  • On the post: Google Music Blog Mess Highlights Why Three Strikes Will Not Work

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2010 @ 10:59am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Chilling Effects

    "Good ISPs ... will NOT remove the content."

    No ISPs will "remove content". They can block your site, but they have no control over the content on it. You're thinking of a web host, not an ISP.

  • On the post: Google Music Blog Mess Highlights Why Three Strikes Will Not Work

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 13 Feb, 2010 @ 10:53am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Chilling Effects

    "If you have the rights to use something and you get a DMCA, it's an illegal notice."

    But if the DMCA takedown comes from the same people who originally granted you the rights, could that be interpreted as a de-facto revocation of those rights?

  • On the post: Movie Star Claims Heathrow Airport Staff Printed Out, Circulated, His Naked Body Images

    Peet McKimmie ( profile ), 10 Feb, 2010 @ 04:38pm

    Re: Heathrow Staff

    I think you'll find that's "Bollyfool"...

    I saw this (not the pictures, the interview) on "Friday Night with Jonathan Ross" last Friday. (UK BBC1) If you dig around YouTube you can probably find the full interview.

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