pyrosf 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Other Big CJEU Case Says Google Must Put Certain Links At The Top Of Search Results

    pyrosf ( profile ), 24 Sep, 2019 @ 12:42pm

    Don't Tell Trump

    How can you tell what's true?

    Headline: Trump exonerated by Muller Investigation

    The President and Fox news says its true.

  • On the post: French Court Declares That Steam Gamers Actually Do Own What They Bought

    pyrosf ( profile ), 23 Sep, 2019 @ 02:13pm

    Re: Re: Indie Dev Impact

    Reselling a game is not like a car. 1) Cars are priced given the resale market exists.
    2) Games have life cycles of sale -> support -> end of life. Resales create a longer support cycle for no additional money as 2-3 people play the game on the same license. You pay for your car support as its not included in the sale.
    3) Very short games could quickly be turned over in less then a day blocking sales from the Dev. This already is an issue with refunds and short games.
    4) Publishers do not tie DLC to the base game account, but instead create additional accounts that would also have to be sold or allow sales. This was of course created to block resales of physical game discs. Of course all this could be solved, setting prices higher to account for the resale market from the start. But you have 30 years of games that were sold the old way blocking something like this from being easy.

  • On the post: Monster Energy Opposes Teenager's Trademark Application Over Logos Not At All Similar

    pyrosf ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2019 @ 10:03pm

    Re:

    After digging into SEC filings for Monster I found that they had a 2.6 million slush fund for legal expenses, other than that it's hard to find out how much money they spend on legal matters but given the insane profitability and huge stock buyback programs they are running, as well as the fact that distribution is now done by coke, Monster has very little to do as a firm but print money and market its drinks.

  • On the post: House Intelligence Committee: Intelligence Community Is Burying A Whistleblower Complaint That May Involve Wrongdoing By The White House

    pyrosf ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2019 @ 10:51am

    Re: Re: Checks and balances?

    Your making assumptions that are not correct. If you live in a Democrat or Republican controlled district, your voice does not matter. If 50% or 100% of district vote, and the district is majority one party, then the outcome will be the same. The only time a vote counts is when a race is close, when a district is about 50/50, or when you have proportional representation.

  • On the post: House Intelligence Committee: Intelligence Community Is Burying A Whistleblower Complaint That May Involve Wrongdoing By The White House

    pyrosf ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2019 @ 02:36pm

    Re: I know...

    But it can't be RICO because you cant indict a sitting president for any crime no matter how crazy. This situation MUST be legal because the President is doing it.

  • On the post: House Intelligence Committee: Intelligence Community Is Burying A Whistleblower Complaint That May Involve Wrongdoing By The White House

    pyrosf ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2019 @ 02:35pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: If your 'employee' can give YOU orders, you'

    The Theory is the same as in court when you destroy or hide evidence, its seen in the worst light possible given its missing. This is a common stand for any situation when evidence is withheld, destroyed, or intentionally not provided. In this case the only reason this evidence would not be provided is because the Trump administration deems it more harmful if released then withheld as its apparently a smoking gun for something. Most likely something tied to the president. (anyone else and Trump would just fire their ass)

  • On the post: History Repeats Itself: Twitter Launches Illegal SF Street Stencil Campaign Just As IBM DId Decades Ago

    pyrosf ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2019 @ 04:17pm

    Pressurewasher

    I recall one firm getting away with this, by cleaning the sidewalks with pressure washers. The laws cover paint, and other stuff, but cleaning the street in targeted ways appears to be legal.

    https://abc7news.com/archive/8410628/

  • On the post: House Intelligence Committee: Intelligence Community Is Burying A Whistleblower Complaint That May Involve Wrongdoing By The White House

    pyrosf ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2019 @ 09:03am

    Re: Re: If your 'employee' can give YOU orders, you're not in ch

    Last time they tried this the president moved funds around to ensure his pet project was funded. He'd just do that again unless congress starts cutting entire agencies and firing everyone. When the president does something dumb, we have far less legal authority then we think we do I guess.

  • On the post: Ninth Circuit Reverses Course While Quoting Its Own Precedent Saying Otherwise; Says Section 230 Doesn't Cover Anti-Competitive Moderation

    pyrosf ( profile ), 13 Sep, 2019 @ 06:56pm

    Re:

    The appeals court was not addressing the merits of the case, only the section 230 dismissal. The trial court could cover the criteria used to call software "problematic" which could include general rules as well as user reviews etc. There is an entire class of virus software that works on the API calls used by the exe, like accessing data outside %AppData% or scanning entire hard drives. A virus detection program could and would trip a lot of those triggers.

  • On the post: The Internet Remains Broken In The Ninth Circuit And, At Least For Now, The Third

    pyrosf ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2019 @ 12:02am

    Re:

    Not quite, if Amazon ran a Mall or even Vendor fair (a collection of vendor booths) then Amazon would still not be at risk for selling bad goods. Even if they assisted with a single payment system at the end of the day the vendors are the liable partys. We do not make landlords liable for bad products, nor do we make payment processors. Sometimes the government asks payment networks to not process some types of transactions, but they have to be told first.

  • On the post: The Internet Remains Broken In The Ninth Circuit And, At Least For Now, The Third

    pyrosf ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2019 @ 11:24pm

    Product Liability in a Digital Age

    I, for one, think the courts are having a hard time squaring product liability, one of the most litigated things in US history, with digital store fronts marketplaces and section 230. Section 230 says the seller is liable but the seller is in China, masking its location via Amazon, and going out of business before Amazon or the courts or really anyone can do anything about it. It's gotten so bad that entire classes of products like batteries or hoverboards are wastelands of firms open for a few weeks and going out of business as soon as they see a few returns.

    So a very fair question is what is a citizen to do in this case? Amazon so far refuses to put safeguards on its own, as its right with Section 230. The courts are almost right out, as the seller is in China or elsewhere. The only place left is an agency like the CFPB or FTC, or baring an agency from trying to fix things on its own, you will see new laws related to product liability.

    I am not sure I would like to see what laws the current administration comes up with to fix the liability issue right now.

  • On the post: Nintendo Does The Nintendo: 'Mario Royale' Fan Game Becomes 'DMCA Royale'… And Is Now Dead

    pyrosf ( profile ), 28 Jun, 2019 @ 07:29pm

    Re:

    Technically what he did was an asset swap, the underlying placement of the assets on the game grid were still the same. That said the lawyers had no idea how well an argument like this would hold up in court as he only copied the relative position of game elements to each other. It came down to "It looks like my game level!" but it was not copied as much as inspired (assuming he did not import the level from the rom). That said, games only have limited copyrightability, you can copyright the rules as written for Monopoly but you cant go after a clone. Ultimately however, Nintendo would bankrupt him without ever telling him what's wrong.

  • On the post: Supreme Court To Review Whether Or Not You Can Copyright State Laws

    pyrosf ( profile ), 26 Jun, 2019 @ 10:07pm

    Re:

    Most professional codes, enshrined often in state law, but not written into the law other then "The State adopts, in its entirety, The Common Electrical code, published by x, ISDN 123" - A copyrighted work, that you know you have to follow, but you must pay to access. I am fairly sure the supreme court will make clear that laws are only binding if you can access them, thus instead a copy of "The Common Electrical Code" will be found in the basement of the library found in the least populated town, located in the least populated area of the state for anyone to gain access to. The door will of course say "Do Not enter", the light bulb will be out, and a guard dog will be posted in the room. Its not our fault that you cant gain access to the code.

  • On the post: Robocalls Swamp Hospitals As The Trump FCC Pretends To Fix The Problem

    pyrosf ( profile ), 25 Jun, 2019 @ 01:06am

    Re: Re: Re: Help me out here

    Twillio is not actually the spam source, you have custom telcos that specialize in quick disconnect calling. They are the hidden middle man located outside the US that have networks designed to make hundreds of thousands of calls per hour. This shadow system was well documented in the one case the FCC went after a US spammer. It continues to work simply because international standards on the phone exchange system have no method to block it short of cutting off international calls completely.

  • On the post: Robocalls Swamp Hospitals As The Trump FCC Pretends To Fix The Problem

    pyrosf ( profile ), 24 Jun, 2019 @ 01:31pm

    Re: Smart Phone Systems are the answer

    First they added caller ID, Spammers got past that
    Then they added the Do Not Call list, spammers used that list to spam more verified numbers.
    After that they started playing the Disconnect signal to Spammers, spammers stopped paying attention to the signal. There are more and better ideas, and Spammers will get past those as well unless we move to a far more secure phone system.

  • On the post: Texas Cities Rush To Extend Camera Contracts Ahead Of The State's Red Light Camera Bans

    pyrosf ( profile ), 29 May, 2019 @ 06:48pm

    Re: Welcome to the Wild Wild Future...

    Think of the other side of this problem, If you could catch all speeders with technology, and fine them in real time, what would be the end result? I would assume it would be something like red light cameras. States would quickly try to get cash out of everyone for every instance of speeding, after a while changing laws to deal with people speeding for a long amount of time, or for people speeding 1 to 3 MPH over the limit. Is this even remotely fair? Not really, it removes all context. The same can be said for red light cameras.

  • On the post: White House Sets Up Echo Chamber For Complaints About Social Media Bias Against Conservatives

    pyrosf ( profile ), 16 May, 2019 @ 12:40pm

    Re: Re: Re:

    I think AC's problem is that at some point conservative ideas are blocked from the Internet. Any platform the size of facebook requires the ability to do business with a wide range of internet companies to manage hosting, billing, CDN services etc. Each of those firms are starting to tell conservative sites to go away, yet when a cake shop tells a gay person to go away it must be the same as when the CDN says they won't do business with you. If somehow all internet firms told conservatives as a group they won't do business with them then there could be a freedom of speech issue, but even here the most you would perhaps win is ICANN asking domain registers to be content neutral as ICANN is a quasi government agent.

  • On the post: NCSoft Has A Great Opportunity To Be Awesome And Human To 'City Of Heroes' Enthusiasts

    pyrosf ( profile ), 26 Apr, 2019 @ 12:39am

    Re:

    Liability Just starting with 3rd party libraries that are not licensed to resale, say for example, the network encryption stack. Traps like this can be anyplace in the code and cost big bucks. Next is ownership, after so many years, who owns the server code? Do they have a clean chain of custody? Are all the art assets owned by the firm? Can you be 100% sure that some promotion for the return of superman is not still in the files someplace? What about those copies of marvel superheros that got made in the editor and might be found in the servers code? No firm wants the liability, an official license says the selling firm owns or has a resale license to all the above and much much more. Easier to simply forget about it and look the other way when a server shows up.

  • On the post: Appeals Court Says It's OK For Cops To Steal Stuff From Citizens

    pyrosf ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2019 @ 06:17pm

    Re: Re: Where did that come from?

    The court is saying they sued the wrong person. They can still sue the city / state for inaccurate accounting of seased goods as a violation of the 14th. This case should have enough evidence to prove that evidence has gone missing given they won in lower court. Only the city / state can bring criminal theft charges.

  • On the post: Appeals Court Says It's OK For Cops To Steal Stuff From Citizens

    pyrosf ( profile ), 05 Apr, 2019 @ 06:11pm

    Re: It's a matter of standing.

    Technically they have sued the wrong person is what the court just said. If there is a disagreement between the official log and the actually taken items your required to go after the city or state. The state can in kind go after the cop if it wants for failure of duty to report. This is of course hogwash, proving a cop lied on cash assets is near impossible and cops know this. Cops can put the wrong number right on the form, order you to sign it or go to jail and short of a dash cam recording it’s simply your word vs theirs. The court just reduced theft to a clerical error.

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