rkhalloran 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (103) comment rss

  • On the post: How Years Of Copyright Maximalism Is Now Killing Pop Music

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 13 Jan, 2020 @ 11:25am

    Re: Re: Re: Re: The History of Music

    Obviously 3 Feb 1959, now where's my whisky & rye ....

  • On the post: Turns Out Oracle Copied Amazon's S3 APIs; When Confronted, Pretends That's Different (Spoiler Alert: It's Not)

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 07 Jan, 2020 @ 11:26am

    Re: Threading the needle

    Of course, go back far enough and IBM could jump on this claiming Oracle ripped off their R database project...

  • On the post: AT&T Jacks Up TV Prices Post Merger After Repeatedly Claiming That Wouldn't Happen

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 24 Oct, 2019 @ 08:00am

    Typ. AT&T marketing

    After The Breakup, it was said by many that AT&T wouldn't know how to sell a cure for cancer. Too many of the execs are still of the old-school monopoly mindset and assume "lock-in loyalty" on the part of their customers. You'd think 30+ years later with landline service nearly dead, mobile customers jumping between carriers based on who provides the best deal this month, and cord-cutting hitting the inflection point that they might actually try competing on service and quality. Naaah, let's squeeze the suckers to pay for thicker gold-plating on those exec's parachutes...

  • On the post: AT&T Jacks Up TV Prices Post Merger After Repeatedly Claiming That Wouldn't Happen

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 24 Oct, 2019 @ 08:00am

    Typ. AT&T marketing

    After The Breakup, it was said by many that AT&T wouldn't know how to sell a cure for cancer. Too many of the execs are still of the old-school monopoly mindset and assume "lock-in loyalty" on the part of their customers. You'd think 30+ years later with landline service nearly dead, mobile customers jumping between carriers based on who provides the best deal this month, and cord-cutting hitting the inflection point that they might actually try competing on service and quality. Naaah, let's squeeze the suckers to pay for thicker gold-plating on those exec's parachutes...

  • On the post: Thin-Skinned Chinese Government Busy Making American Sports Orgs Look Silly On Free Speech Issues

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2019 @ 12:57pm

    Re:

    In the NBA case, this was an team 'employee' using their public position to advertise their opinion, and the employer then choosing to placate an offended group of customers despite its stated posture of supporting US free-speech values. In the Blizzard case, it was leveraging a "don't offend others" clause no doubt way down in the EULA against one customer against another customer-group, again in spite of US conventions and triggering a counter-response supporting the original poster. It's about impossible to make an utterly neutral statement that doesn't push someone's buttons, somewhere, so this is a much more questionable move, and may backfire on them to some degree.

  • On the post: Thin-Skinned Chinese Government Busy Making American Sports Orgs Look Silly On Free Speech Issues

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2019 @ 12:57pm

    Re:

    In the NBA case, this was an team 'employee' using their public position to advertise their opinion, and the employer then choosing to placate an offended group of customers despite its stated posture of supporting US free-speech values. In the Blizzard case, it was leveraging a "don't offend others" clause no doubt way down in the EULA against one customer against another customer-group, again in spite of US conventions and triggering a counter-response supporting the original poster. It's about impossible to make an utterly neutral statement that doesn't push someone's buttons, somewhere, so this is a much more questionable move, and may backfire on them to some degree.

  • On the post: Ajit Pai, Telecom Lobbyists Are Now Coordinating Their Lies In Perfect Symmetry

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 20 Sep, 2019 @ 06:41am

    Re: inconsistent

    The point of net neutrality isn't QoS, which the prior rules specifically allowed for. The point is that startup site XYZ should have no more barriers to customer access than Netflix/FB/Google/etc . If XYZ can buy the bandwidth to get their content onto the Net, they should have as much access to customers as the Big Four. This is the basic disruptive nature of the 'Net. The latter being able to 'pay the Danegeld' to various ISPs in order to reach those customers at full speed is LITERAL rent-seeking behavior that the NN rules were meant to prevent. This is the ISPs picking market winners based on their ability to pay for prioritized access to those customer bases, and is completely anti-competitive. For all the conservatives' trumpeting about free markets, this is anything but, and their failure to acknowledge as much brands them for what they really are.

  • On the post: Pinterest's Way Of Dealing With Anti-Vax Nonsense And Scams Is Only Possible Because Of Section 230

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 05 Sep, 2019 @ 07:26am

    Re: Re: Freedom to choose

    SImple math: you get vaccinated once as a kid, maybe a booster as a teen. Pharma's not making any big money on that; consider the chronic medications like insulin, blood thinners, cholesterol meds etc that you have to take EVERY FREAKIN' DAY, there's the vector for price gouging. Yes, some people have bad reactions to vaccines, the percentage is exceptionally small. The benefit to society in general greatly outweighs this. The anti-vaxxers touting how few people die of the classic childhood diseases don't count in the much more frequent (but still slight) neurological problems, blindness, male sterility from mumps, etc etc. Dodging the question by focusing only on the worst possible outcome frankly proves the moral bankruptcy of their position.

  • On the post: THE Ohio State University Applies For THE Stupidest Trademark In THE World

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 20 Aug, 2019 @ 05:46am

    absurdity

    I'm an OSU alumni, and love my alma mater, but this is freakin' ridiculous, and I hope it gets justly shot down by USPTO.

  • On the post: Conan Doyle Estate Asks Supreme Court To Step In And Block Sherlock Holmes From Being Public Domain'd

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2019 @ 09:01am

    Re: Disney

    Having young grandkids, I notice that now the House of Mouse is offering "classic Mickey" merch, very likely intended to refresh the copyright on the early renditions of the characters from the "Steamboat Willy" days

  • On the post: While Everyone's Busy, Hollywood & Record Labels Suggest Congress Bring Back SOPA

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2018 @ 11:46am

    Re: Re: Thank God for Midterms...

    Copyright infringements are a CIVIL matter; why is the FBI supposed to treat it as a CRIMINAL offense other than the baksheesh (go look it up...) provided by the entertainment industry to our elected officials?

    Shouldn't law enforcement be after more important crimes like, say, terrorism, drugs, etc than worrying about somebody copying a freakin' CD?

  • On the post: While Everyone's Busy, Hollywood & Record Labels Suggest Congress Bring Back SOPA

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2018 @ 11:42am

    Re: Re:

    https://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod

    "Hollywood accounting" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting) is a known fallacy meant to centralize money to the studios involved.

    The actual impact is somewhere behind minor farm crops...

    Back up your claims or please STFU.

  • On the post: While Everyone's Busy, Hollywood & Record Labels Suggest Congress Bring Back SOPA

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 11 Dec, 2018 @ 11:36am

    Re: Re: Won't go away until pirates are defeated.

    NO ONE WILL PAY IF DON'T HAVE TO.

    1. The success of streaming services, both music & video
    2. The growing success of small bands touring, keeping in touch with fanbases via social media and able to sell CDs at their performances (caught 50th anniversary of Tannahill Weavers thanks to FB posts...)
    3. The broad number of self-produced videos on YouTube/Vimeo/...
    4. The success of small artists funding themselves by Patreon subscription.

    Yup, I call bullshit.

    Primarily this is impacting the execs who are finding their gatekeeper role being made irrelevant by the swarm of alternate distribution mechanisms the 'Net is providing. "and nothing of value was lost..."

  • On the post: For Some Reason, BMW Is Asking For More Time To Oppose The Latest Gwen Stacey Character Trademark

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 19 Sep, 2018 @ 07:17am

    Re: nitpick

    The character was from an alternate reality where Gwen got bitten by the radioactive spider instead of Peter Parker (and Peter ends up dying later on instead of her). She was merged over to the main Marvel universe later on, and since they already had a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Woman_(Jessica_Drew)] (Spider-Woman) character there, they've relabeled her as Ghost Spider.

  • On the post: Hotel That Charged Guest $350 For A Negative Review Now Facing A Lawsuit From State Attorney General

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 02 Jan, 2018 @ 12:19pm

    Re: Re:

    The new owners are Szakaly's daughter/son-in-law... I would guess this is a move to avoid the blowback from the bad publicity around this case while keeping the property "in the family".

  • On the post: Five Below, Trendy Retailer, Sues 10 Below, Ice Cream Seller, For Trademark Infringement

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2017 @ 06:42am

    the we-sell-food-too argument

    There's a couple of their stores in my area; mostly they're selling cheap t-shirts, closeout toys/videos/game disks/books, phone accessories (cases/screen guards/charging cables), and by the checkout there's a wire rack for candy & a cooler for ice cream sandwiches/cones. You'd miss it if you weren't looking for it.

    Going after these guys for infringement is way beyond the pale.

  • On the post: First Hearing In The Lawsuit Against Us, Along With Even More Filings

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 11 May, 2017 @ 09:00am

    Re: Re: "EMAIL algorithm"

    Yes, since Shiva's insisted on that all-caps EMAIL when talking about his teenage work for UMDNJ, he did invent whatever algorithms used in that particular program.

    That said, do those algorithms comply with any of the IETF standards of the time? My understanding is they do not (I'm quite willing to be shown otherwise). That said, his work is an interesting effort for a teenager in the late 70s/early 80s, but has NO impact to the current landscape for electronic mail communications, where the IETF standards for interoperation apply.

  • On the post: Revealed: ISPs Already Violating Net Neutrality To Block Encryption And Make Everyone Less Safe Online

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 14 Oct, 2014 @ 10:50am

    Re:

    On those days I work from home (for A Large US Bank), I connect via a VPN client. Are you telling me I'm breaking the law doing that? Or are you simply an uninformed git?

  • On the post: Prenda Loses Big Again; Court Orders It To Pay Back Settlement Money, Refers To Law Enforcement

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2013 @ 05:55am

    Re:

    Why Mr. Steele, how nice of you to join the conversation :-).

    Any particular reason we should feel sorry for someone that deliberately posts porn online then trolls the downloaders for infringement settlements to 'protect' them from the embarassment of a court case? The docs at this point seem to make it clear that the downloaded materials in question were in fact uploaded by Prenda and/or its associated shell companies. IANAL, but I believe this would be termed entrapment were it done by the authorities.

    Given the above and the dubious explanations provided by Steele &c, pardon us for not feeling too upset about his current butthurt.

  • On the post: The Insanity Of Making A 'Wizard Of Oz' Film In Today's IP Climate

    rkhalloran ( profile ), 07 Mar, 2013 @ 06:23am

    Re:

    The witch is never named in the Baum books; Elphaba is from the Gregory Maguire "Wicked" books/plays.

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