Chris Meadows 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Pillsbury Sends Cease & Desist To 'Dough Girl' Bakery

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2010 @ 03:15am

    To the front, day and night
    Where the doughboys dig and fight
    And those caissons go rolling along.
    Our barrage will be there
    Fired on the rocket’s glare
    While those caissons go rolling a-long.

    —"The Caissons Go Rolling Along"

    An Artillery Song, dedicated to the U. S. Field Artillery
    Written by Gen. Edmund L. Gruber (1908)

    Published 1921 by Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc., New York

  • On the post: Is There A Need For A Dedicated Journalism Outfit To 'Follow Up' On News?

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 03 Aug, 2010 @ 02:53am

    Like Shatner is doing?

    Interestingly enough, William Shatner is doing a series for cable on this very idea, in which he talks with people who were formerly part of huge stories, like Bernard Goetz or the Malvos (his interview with them made the news itself).

  • On the post: Pissing Off A Movie Critic By Claiming Copyright Over A Video Review… Probably Not Smart

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 22 Jul, 2010 @ 04:19pm

    Funny to see the review repost on YouTube, given that the Nostalgia Critic started out on YouTube before having to move to his own site due to YouTube taking his reviews down for copyright violations. Wonder how long that will stay up?

    By the way, nobody can decisively say that it is or isn't fair use. Fair use is a legal defense, and as such has to be decided by a judge using a four-factor test. People can say that they think it is or isn't fair use, but there aren't really any bright lines.

    Which is why the current copyright system is heavily tilted in favor of those who own the media, since even if everyone would agree something is a fair use and the copyright owner challenges it, the arguably fair user still has to pay his own defense costs and argue it out in court to get a declaration.

  • On the post: WSJ Opinion Highlights The Problems Of 'Permission Culture'

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 12 Jul, 2010 @ 09:42am

    No such thing as "obvious" fair use

    It's worse than that. I'm not a lawyer, but as I understand it fair use is a defense, not a right, because each putative instance of it has to be considered separately—there's no "this will always be fair use" rule of thumb in legal terms, even if we laypeople like to claim this or that use is "obviously" fair. There's a four-factor test that has to be applied to judge each case. Thus, Woodlief could very well have been sued by Joe Henry's record label if he'd gone ahead, over just those eight words. A court might well have found for him in the end, but in the meantime he (and his publisher) would have have had to pay the legal fees and deal with the stress of the lawsuit—over eight little, easily replaceable words. So the fault in this case is not with overcautious publishers but with the system itself as it now stands.

  • On the post: Misguided Outrage At NY Times' Ethicist Over Ethics Of Downloading A Book

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 09 Apr, 2010 @ 01:42pm

    Re: all or none at all

    Right. Remember, even though the Supreme Court held that you have the legal right to rip CDs to MP3s, you should still buy the CD AND the MP3s because purchasing one version doesn't entitle you to other versions of a given product.

    Yeah.

  • On the post: Dear Macmillan, You Don't Embrace The New By Trying To Protect The Old

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2010 @ 11:29am

    Re: Re: A Premium on Impatience

    Eh. I think that hardcover and paperback are convenient shorthands. People know that hardcovers cost more than paperbacks and come out first; they don't publish both editions at the same time. People getting hung up on "hardcover vs. paperback e-ink" are just looking for a fight to pick.

  • On the post: Dear Macmillan, You Don't Embrace The New By Trying To Protect The Old

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2010 @ 11:23am

    Re: (Storysmith's post)

    A successful business model like starting out charging $15 for an e-book, then reducing the price a few months later?

    Gosh, maybe Macmillan should try that!

  • On the post: Dear Macmillan, You Don't Embrace The New By Trying To Protect The Old

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 03 Mar, 2010 @ 11:51pm

    A Premium on Impatience

    There's more going on here than scarcity vs. abundance, though. There's also the time factor involved.

    I go into more detail about this in a TeleRead post scheduled to go up at 8:15 a.m. Central Time (in which I link this post, too), but bear in mind the difference between the cost of printing a paperback and printing a hardcover is only a buck or two—but hardcovers cost three times paperback price.

    It's a premium on impatience. People who absolutely have to have the book right now will be willing to pay that extra cash. People who aren't, won't.

    It's the same way with Baen's E-ARCs. Nobody seems to feel that they're somehow trying to pull a fast one by selling these less-proofed electronic advance reader copies for $15 three months before the final e-book comes out for $6. If people are impatient enough to want to pay that much for a draft version, they can. If not, nobody's forcing them to.

    I don't see Macmillan's variable pricing plan as being substantially different in principle than that. Just on a longer time scale.

  • On the post: Time To Redesign The Hotdog… But Watch Out For Patents

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 03 Mar, 2010 @ 12:59pm

    Hollow dogs have been done before

    Surely I can't be the only one who remembers those "chili dogs with the chili inside" called Frank'n'stuffs?

  • On the post: Author Claims $9.99 Is Not A 'Real Price' For Books

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 11 Feb, 2010 @ 06:00pm

    Entitlement viewpoint too simplistic

    The Amazon/Macmillan feud blew the lid off of a simmering cauldron of resentment that e-book early adopters have been tending for a long time (ten years or more in some cases). It seems like a lot of authors and publishers aren't really aware of this, and tend to blame the loud complaints on a sense of "entitlement". This isn't strictly accurate.

    Here is a post from a long-time reader who is very frustrated with high prices, lack of availability, and the poor quality of e-books—and being rebuffed when she tries to contact stores, publishers, and authors to have the errors fixed or to try to get their e-books available in her country.

    And here is my post outlining how those who side with Macmillan and the angry readers of e-books have been talking past each other with neither clearly understanding what the other has to say.

  • On the post: No, The Death Of Newspapers Does Not Mean An Age Of Corruption

    Chris Meadows ( profile ), 26 Feb, 2009 @ 03:27pm

    It certainly wasn't newspapers…

    …who broke the story of the falsified letters that led to Dan Rather's resignation.