Prokofy Neva 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 09:35pm

    Re: Re: just gotta expect it ...

    You mean like Google? That owns Youtube?

    They don't pay their taxes.

    They launder their money through Ireland to avoid taxes in this country.

    You mean like that?

  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 09:34pm

    Re: Re: Go straight to second base

    Yeah, they have that in Russia, a civil law country. This is no longer practiced in common law countries.

  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 09:31pm

    Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr

    If you upload lots of youtubes that are pirated and then create a giant links site with hundreds of links to lead people to that stolen property, of course you are complicit in piracy yourself.

    Or -- let's see -- you're going to try to pretend this is about First Amendment freedoms lol. The First Amendment doesn't extend to posting the address of a house with the door open and the people gone on a bulletin board urging people to steal.

  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 09:29pm

    Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr

    Because I don't buy the story. I sense there's a lot more to the story here. I don't think AT ALL it's about the government suddenly saying "oh, we goofed, awful, let's let it go." I think lawyers merely scarified them.

    Say, if the lawyers REAAAAAALY think their client was so innocent and a victim of lack of due process, they should go the full monte and SUE FOR DAMAGES. Why aren't they doing that in this awful, awful heinous violation of due process THE HORROR!!!!

    In fact, the government should go hurry and get the Wayback copies because knowing Google, and their sentiments, they may destroy the evidence.

    But that's the open question to me. Here Mike has written about this AWFUL AWFUL THE HORROR THING of people impounded an ENTIRE YEAR but their lawyers aren't suing for damages over that grave injustice. Why?

  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 09:26pm

    Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr

    Hey, that's great that you concede that after five minutes, anyone would have to agree this is a pirate site!

    The government obviously saw the same thing and felt perfectly justified in closing it down. They felt that due process was merely an add-on.

    That's wrong, and we get all that.

    This became a highly lawyered-up cause celebre, and now we've all been distracted from seeing that this was an infringing site.

    Thanks for putting the focus back on that fact : )

  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 09:25pm

    Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr

    Again, herr, derr, I "got it" that the story here is being tendentiously played, with a very cunning and manipulative copyleftist agenda, to make us all gasp in horror at the lack of due process.

    We got all that.

    AND it's a pirate site where lots of content was obviously uploaded. And now that fact has been drowned out in a sea of tendentious crap about due process that really is beside the point, as when the feds went for this site, it was OBVIOUS what it was. But then -- as I already said -- either they didn't do their paperwork right or something else happened or there was some shady backroom deal with lawyers or they were threatened by the race card or SOMETHING, and they let it go. So what? It's not like they arrested a person and put them on death row and Mike Myasnick came up with a DNA test to prove the suspect innocent.

    What it's about is a pirate site that got legitimately closed down, and then with a lot of lawyering, got opened back up.

    This is why we need SOPA. To have the rule of law, so that individual adjudications like this don't take so long, and don't wind up the prey of predatory lawyers with agendas, but are resolved by judges.

    Thanks for helping to make that obvious point!

  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 09:21pm

    Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr

    I'm not going to keep whining about lack of due process. There are plenty of people whining about that artificially-amplified aspect of this hugely tendentious case. Sure, due process is a great thing and it was violated here. And? And you've also distracted from the fact that it was indeed a pirate site and the feds had more than probable cause to close it down. That they couldn't make their case later is mysteriously and we don't have enough information about their possible botching of paperwork or filings, or about backroom deals with aggressive lawyers maybe playing the race card, or playing whatever cards they have to play.

    We do not have transparency on this case. As another reader asked, where are the court papers, eh?

  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 09:19pm

    Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr

    Um, it's not racist to point out when other people are playing the race card, BIG TIME, by insisting that this site is an innocent little site helping black kids break into hip hop big time by enabling them to put up their work for free.

    Of course I understood the site, and I went and looked at it, and I see it shows youtubes that have copyright on them, and people even writing things like "I hope this doesn't get removed". Derr. My God, this is obvious, just go and look.

    I don't see that the government "didn't have enough evidence to proceed". I don't buy that at all, having looked at the site in past years now. I think that the government found it might have difficult in making its case because aggressive lawyers were going to play the race card on them. That would be my estimation of the situation.

    That's great if Kanye West and Puffy use this site. Are they happy to have their material stolen and endlessly copied without any revenue?

  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 09:16pm

    Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr

    No, of course it matters. Because if the feds could easily establish that it had loads of infringing copyright on it, it was justified to shut it down, because it was a piracy site. Due process is a great thing, and of course it must be upheld. But all that's happening here with this story is outrageous and tendentious manipulation and propagandizing around this facet of it -- the violation of due process ostensibly involved -- without any honest portrayal of what the nature of the site was.

    It's the hope of Myasnick and the propagandists and the attorneys hired by copyleftists of course to be able to distract everyone with the due process issue, and make these people out to be horrible victims of injustice! the horror! and distract everyone from seeing that indeed they are pirates.

    Trying to cast around to analogies like car impounding is beside the case. It's clear from a simple look at the nature of the site that they had loads of infringing content. The feds felt justified in shutting them down. Who knows why they dragged it on or sealed something? Maybe they didn't fill out all the proper paperwork or do everything by the book and didn't want to lose their obvious case over the kind of technicalities that lawyers can and do pounce on to get a case thrown out even of someone obviously guilty. Whatever. That shouldn't distract from the fact that ICE is doing its job by and large to pursue piracy, and that's a good thing. If they botch some cases, hey, let the lawyers due for damages *shrugs*. This is America.

    There *are* too many to prosecute in this fashion, and that's why a good universal law like SOPA needs to be established and precedents built up and practices established so we can move through these cases more quickly and more effectively.

  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 10 Dec, 2011 @ 09:10pm

    Re: Re: But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr

    Yeah, really! Because Mike is lying about the nature of this website. A look at its record in the Wayback shows lots of youtubes of artists with copyrighted material uploaded to this site. The attorneys -- and he just parroting them -- make a tendentious and narrow claim that their client only had free materials supplied by artists who supposedly wanted their content given away for free, or critics just making "fair use" of clips, or something...But that's only part of the use case of this site -- the infringing content appears to be the bulk of it.

    Er, I'm finding it hard to see any jackbooks here except by you thugs, who steal people's livelihoods away from them by condoning piracy and engaging in theft content yourselves. I fail to see why people can't "voice their concerns". The feds closed a site because it had loads of copyrighted stuff on it. Too bad, so sad. They took way to long to adjudicate the case. We get that. It's not good. But at the end of the day, the nature of the site here is being covered up outrageously by the ideology Mike Myasnick, and he knows it, and we know it. The police gave the site back because they had too many cases, or some lawyer cut some deal with them, or they'd figure they'd get back to it and prosecute it another day. That's all. It's not about fascism, it's about the right of people to make a livelihood. Say, how do YOU make a living, big guy?!

  • On the post: Breaking News: Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 08 Dec, 2011 @ 10:03am

    But Dajaz1 *is* a pirate site, derr

    Yeah, we get it that the evil cruel ICE with its chilling evil name has done an evil thing. Yadda yadda.

    So...you have one case like this, Mike? Just one? Oh, maybe two? Awful, AWFUL! But edge cases, as we all know. No one should have to wait a year, guilty or not, to have their case adjudicated. But could it be that there are just so many cases like this of in fact real piracy even you would have to concede, so they can't get to them? And could it be that it is completely obvious that this is indeed a pirate site? And could the ICE have given it back merely because it was just too much bother to prosecute even the obvious? Because there are just too many?

    More to the point, Mike, why do you LIE about the nature of this web site? It's not like we can't go to the Wayback Machine and see what this site was all about:

    http://web.archive.org/web/20080511230605/http://dajaz1.com/

    Oh, what Dajaz1 was all about was people uploading hundreds and hundreds of Youtubes that were protected by copyright as you can quickly see.

    These weren't scrappy young start-up musicians trying to get their own unique CDs heard, poor blacks that you'd like to exploit to get what you imagine to be fearful white liberals guilt-tripped into opposing SOPA. (In fact, I don't see a single upload like that, but I have to work through several years).

    There wasn't just "sampling" or "fair use" either.

    Oh, no, Mike. That's fake. And you *know* it's fake. Lyndsey Lohan isn't a poor black hip-hop star trying to get a DJ or music critic to hear her. Nor is Lil Wayne. nor is Busta Rhymes. Nor are hundreds of artists who are famous and whose Youtubes were uploaded to that site, and who don't want to give away their work for free to masses because they need to get paid and have a right to get paid, -- as do their producers, who go to a lot of trouble to produce them and advertise them.

    Honestly, Mike, *you are ridiculous* with these fake claims.

  • On the post: Second Life Dragged Into Legal Dispute Over Copyright Of Virtual Horses And Virtual Bunnies

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2011 @ 10:30am

    First Amendment Invocation is Specious Edge-Casing

    Goldman's invocation of the First Amendment is specious and edge-casey.

    The First Amendment as you know doesn't trump freedom of association and...the First Amendment.

    As the publisher, Linden Lab has the right to publish or not publish content. It can decide it likes Ozimal better than Amaretto -- it fetes Ozimal mightily and gives it a huge leg up with special privileges and advertising on the front page and even in spam emails to all premium accounts.

    So even if the court decided in Amaretto's favour, LL could ignore the decision. Indeed, mindful of the precedent that this could create for a First Amendment dimension, the judge would likely not set it up that way and might ultimately just seek a settlement out of court (as has occurred in every other content theft case in SL).

    But again, it's specious -- and an old geek trick that we saw with Net Neutrality, too -- to convert what is essentially a PROPERTY issue and a COPYRIGHT issue into a "free speech" issue.

    On the other hand, LL is committed to upholding copyright. If it could be reliably shown that Amaretto had copied Ozimal, it would throw out Amaretto. But if the shoe were on the other paw or hoof, it might simply do nothing. It often responds that way.

  • On the post: Second Life Dragged Into Legal Dispute Over Copyright Of Virtual Horses And Virtual Bunnies

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 06 Jan, 2011 @ 10:24am

    $7Billion Virtual Goods Market

    Yes, and way back we warned that YOU were trouble because you defy what is national and international law, which is copyright.

    Unlike your friend Google with YouTube and any number of other platforms with social media that can't pay their bills and have to keep getting big infusions of VC cash (Facebook), Second Life turns a profit, and makes money for its users, most importantly (the other platforms only take money or pay a pittance in Adsense).

    That makes you furious at Techdirt, because it goes against your religion.

    Too bad. DRM is here to stay; so are digital commodities that require payment and are behind pay walls. Deal with it.

    Virtual goods are a $7 billion business. $7 billion! And those goods are sold on proprietary platforms, in walled gardens, with proprietary code. And God bless them for bucking the tide of the technocommunist sandbox Internet of Tim Berners-Lee and all his descendents unto Web 2.0. There is hope now for Web 3.0.

  • On the post: Second Life Gang Using Copyright To Stop Discussion Of Its Tactics?

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 06 Feb, 2010 @ 09:57pm

    Unfortunately, These Aren't Government Officials

    it doesn't apply to works created by employees of the government acting in their official capacity

    It would be grand if this principle could be invoked about Linden Lab and the paramilitary groups it uses to police other residents.

    In form, if not substance, they are like a corrupt Latin American or Eurasian government with death squads.

    But in reality, they are just a social media company. They're a private company. They can do what they want. If they chose to have some of their little friends help them with governance, it's going to be hard to prove that they can't do that in their private club.

    Still, I'm for trying, as I think these platforms with common carrier status and safe harbour and all the rest should have to protect civil rights like a government as they play that role in this case.

  • On the post: Second Life Gang Using Copyright To Stop Discussion Of Its Tactics?

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 06 Feb, 2010 @ 09:53pm

    Re: reporting and fair use

    Peter,

    Again, you are muddling here.

    You need to be clear.

    Did the JLU REMOTELY scrape this chat? Did they obtain it under false pretexts? Without the knowledge of the parties?

    Or are they participants in the chat, in public spaces like sandboxes?

    If the latter, I'm all for upholding their right to publish the chat on their blog as a way to discuss matters of the public interest, which is the crime of these griefers.

    But it's wrong for them to gather it along with data from RL, espionage, speculation, etc. an make a police-like dossier.

    You just aren't getting this story straight, and it's maddening because you are undermining journalistic rights on the way to your star turn here.

    The JLU doesn't have a case, and your defense is fair use. But they wouldn't have a case even if you published everything that was leaked, including the description of the scripted device, which I published (and which was taken down from Typepad too). They wouldn't have a case not because they published chat, which is ok to publish, but because they used it in a vigilante operation that even involved the FBI.

    BTW, your spin on this is all self-serving, just as you did with the Evangeline story.

  • On the post: Second Life Gang Using Copyright To Stop Discussion Of Its Tactics?

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 06 Feb, 2010 @ 09:48pm

    Re: Copyright and Common Sense

    Duh, I realize all that. Are you daft? I'm not challenging this, in the way Peter is -- you're the one taking aim at the wrong target.

    Alex, you're a total arrogant ass. And you're so used to the stereotype of me in the Herald that you can't see reason. As much as you'd like to posture and get your gotcha glee for the day over this image, in fact I don't view the Justice League as a conspiracy against *me* -- I view it merely as violation of everyone's civil rights and TOS guarantees to privacy within SL.

    I'm not "having trouble aiming". I'm aiming at the proper target -- but you just don't accept that it is a target. Griefers are a legitimate target; but so are vigilantes. Can you handle that? Or do you need to spout liberal truisms about freedom of information?

    And I haven't followed the line the Herald is following. Read my blog. I don't think this is about copyright at all -- it's about HOW the material is used, and I absolutely insist on the right to publish chat. Absolutely. The Herald has gotten this wrong, not me.

    The Herald incites crimes. Therefore its screaming now about the rights of criminals is rather suspect.

    Even so, these criminals (griefers) do have rights. To fair and just processes. These cannot be ensured by vigilantes. And the vigilantes have rights, too -- as do journalists. Peter is missing that totally and in the process undermining journalism.

    Peter Ludlow and Mark McCahill both have left out a hugely important aspect of this case that in fact they should be upholding:

    o the right to whistleblowing -- even if the convos or the documents are private, if they illustrate abuse and violation of the law, they should be outed, and the whistleblower should not suffer reprisal. So that means me as a whistleblower -- but there's also the parallel issue of the JLU as a whistleblower on those committing crimes who are the griefers. It needs a careful parsing, but the way it looks now, my blogging isn't in violation of anything but their vigilantism is in violation of privacy and Internet stalking laws.

    o the right to publish chat on third-party sites is sacred. And here, Mark and Peter's the invocation of the Linden TOS is not in compliance with the First Amendment values, and it is also not something even LL demands. They have no jurisdiction over third-party sites. Journalists and bloggers have to uphold that absolutely, and they didn't, and they're stupid.

    If you read my blog on this you'd be better informed.
    http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2010/01/the-justice-leak.html?cid=6a00d83451cfe069e2012876d2d286970c

  • On the post: Second Life Gang Using Copyright To Stop Discussion Of Its Tactics?

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 06 Feb, 2010 @ 09:36pm

    Re: the DMCA counterclaim I sent to Typepad February 4th

    Of course Pixeleen/Mark McCahill has ZERO credibliity in ranting about the rights of griefers now, as he incited them and abetted them and celebrated them.

    His coming to their defense while pretending to be defending principles is revolting.

    If Mark McCahill really cared about investigative reporting and free speech and debate, he wouldn't have bullied me into resigning from the forums by letting these very griefers harass me endlessly and call for my resignation and destroy my sims.

    What's especially awful about this interchange is Mark McCahill is implying that this speech in SL should remain ever protected, and never discussed on third-party blogs.

    But it's hateful and anti-semitic, and it involves plotting to harm people. That *does* need exposure. We *do* need to fight for the right to publish such speech in the public interest.

    It's just that this should not become part of a third-party espionage database combined with RL info and piped back inworld in a police operation.

    BTW Heinrich posted "eviction notices" on all my tenants' doors causing them to move out and lose me business. That's the sort of destructive crime these people engage in.

    Having an attitude that they enjoy endless protection from prosecution for these crimes is all wet, and it's what the Herald is known for. It undermines their case against vigilantism.

    I am not for vigilantes dealing with these people, collecting dossiers on them, or punishing them.

    But I am for the Lindens and RL authorities taking action. And that's what the Herald can't grasp as the right thing to do.

  • On the post: Second Life Gang Using Copyright To Stop Discussion Of Its Tactics?

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 06 Feb, 2010 @ 09:30pm

    Re: Re: DMCA Used on Virtual Whistleblowers

    I've gotten my story straight, Mike. I got it all straight on this interchange, remember?

    http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090501/0154374713.shtml

    Copyright in SL isn't in a mess; if anything, it works pretty well, and the blatant theft there undermines a good system that can work better with more enforcement of policy.

    You claim that the physics is so different in SL (due to the analog hole and digital creation theft) that we shouldn't have to apply RL laws to it. Baloney. Everyone does anyway. The world thrives and prouced $550 million turnover in goods and services precisely because it has a DRM system that largely *works* -- something of course you would find reprehensible.

    Linden Lab has been incredibly dilatory on publishing guidelines for thirdparty viewers who violate copyright and invade privacy -- they are under tremendous pressure from these copyleftists who you've shamefully fanned in this post from last summer.

    The screenshot DMCA gambit has been used once to my knowledge, and it failed.

    You took the side of an extreme group in SL that called for this:

    "What we do not want, and that's what this petition is about, are the following 4 restrictions that come by default on every prim that you rez:

    1) Allow nobody to copy

    2) Next owner can not copy

    3) Next owner can not modify

    4) Next owner can not resell/give away"

    Sorry, but if you are for property rights, and for IP, and for copyright, you wouldn't have supported this group and their extremist calls. You claim you supported them merely "on technical grounds" because you said it was "impossible" in 2003. It hasn't been impossible; the only thing that is impossible is changing the incredibly stubborn and narrow-minded tekkie take on this problem which allows code to hobble human progress.

    You effectively supported a pernicious, copyleftist assault on the JIRA:
    http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8049

    My effort to debate this in fact only led me to being permanently banned from the JIRA.

    Your fanning of the EFF lets us know your true attitude toward big corporations. Sure, you like *some* big corporations like Google that create free opportunities for widgets and ad sales, but you hate AT*T, don't you, like a good little tekkie.

    You get *your* story straight. You haven't investigated this at all, and you've merely lazily posted a paragraph of garbled text from Uri who isn't even identifying the legal issues properly.

  • On the post: Second Life Gang Using Copyright To Stop Discussion Of Its Tactics?

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 04 Feb, 2010 @ 11:54pm

    Re: The other side of this story

    No one has asked for your "help" and no one needs you to contact Linden Lab, the FBI, or any other authority on their behalf.

    You're an abusive group functioning outside the law, and your harassment of writers who publicize your abusiveness is even a more grave form of violation of civil rights.

  • On the post: Second Life Gang Using Copyright To Stop Discussion Of Its Tactics?

    Prokofy Neva ( profile ), 04 Feb, 2010 @ 11:52pm

    Re: re: GreenLantern's comment

    I believe it is like the Pentagon Papers in *type* if not, of course, in seriousness and magnitude of offense.

    However, the issue isn't that they violated private conversations only. They did that, but they were private conversations they obtained access to because they were one of the parties in the conversation. In some states and countries, that's all you need to have the right to publish a conversation from a telephone call, the consent of *one* of the parties.

    It could be argued that these conversations are not like telephone conversations, however in several ways -- they take place in a public world online with open access between characters in a virtual world in which real life names are not given unless someone decides to put them on their profile.

    But other conversations this group gathered were public in nature, i.e. in public room chat, or in public situations like sandboxes where they were undertaking their vigilante roleplaying work, filing abuse reports on people they decided were violating the TOS. So those conversations cannot be considered private, and the right to copy and dicuss them on third party sites should be upheld. But they went further. They gathered all this information, and combined it with whatever RL info or inferences they could scrape off the Internet at large; they combined it with private conversations. The result was a huge database of secret-police style dossiers on people, which they then piped back into the virtual world through the device on demand to be able to keep hunting "miscreants". They also gave this information and this device to Linden Lab employees -- and here's what no one is mentioning! to the RL FBI.

    It was their claim to be cooperating with the real-life FBI in the U.S. that prompted me to publish everything I could on them. A Linden Lab employee seems to have cooperated tacitly at one time with these people in violating people's civil rights. For them to stand by while they go to the *FBI* becomes even more troublesome.

    I'm all for combatting griefing. I don't take the cynical and nihilist view to griefing so many do. I'm all for contacting the FBI, when the griefing reaches the level of harm in real life or severe monetary loss, etc. But the victim himself should go to the FBI, not some vigilante group.

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