Roger Strong 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (3460) comment rss

  • On the post: Copyright Once Again Hiding Important Cultural Artifacts

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 17 May, 2018 @ 09:49am

    Re: Eternal Copyright

    I have no problem with copyright extending beyond the author's death. If the author of a best-selling book dies soon after, it's reasonable to expect that a spouse and children will be looked after by collecting royalties.

    If I instead build a house, it doesn't go into the public domain when I die. The wife and kids still get the benefits of ownership.

    Having said that, there should be reasonable limits on copyright. Life of the author plus 70 years plus 20-year extensions is ridiculous.

  • On the post: It's Over: The Podcast Patent Troll's Patent is Officially And Completely Dead

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 15 May, 2018 @ 08:27pm

    Re: Reward the shareholders

    Wikipedia also says:

    James Logan, Founder The history of Personal Audio began on October 2, 1996, when James Logan, Daniel F. Goessling and Charles G. Call filed patents....
    Just referring to them by a company name is unacceptable. Their real names should be on record. And remembered.

  • On the post: FBI's Bust Of Black Open Carry Advocate Predicated On An InfoWars Video Ends In Dismissed Indictment

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 15 May, 2018 @ 11:22am

    Re:

    No. Because being an "open-carry advocate while black" stands out from the others because it's the simplest path to gun control. It terrifies the ammosexual crowd.

    Imagine: Democrats take a strong pro-NRA stance. Declare that gun ownership is an important part of American citizenship, an important defence against the tyranny of the government and the establishment of a ruling class.

    Then they begin a campaign to encourage and assist gun ownership by blacks, Hispanics, Muslims and any minority that has ever feared the tyranny of a ruling class.

    The next Republican administration would take away everyone's guns.

  • On the post: California Gov't Thinks It Might Be Able To Regulate Fake News Sometime Before 2020

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 14 May, 2018 @ 12:48pm

    Re: No, problem is too many liars lying to influence "politics", which

    always turns out to mean "leftists", "liberals"
    Terms which from folks like you always turn out to mean "anyone doing what I don't like even though it's always been the policy of conservatives on the right." Especially including corporatism.

  • On the post: AT&T Cans Exec Over Cohen Payment Kerfuffle, Pretends This Kind Of Influence Peddling Isn't Perfectly Routine

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 11 May, 2018 @ 11:57am

    Re: He wasn't fired for the paymnets...

    Which is silly, because AT&T is in an era where getting caught in irrelevant, and shame is non-existent.

    I mean really, just look at Trump and Iran:

    - In March Trump calls the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq "the single worst decision ever made."

    - Days later he appoints John Bolton - the invasion's biggest cheerleader - and who promises "regime change" in Iran - as his national security advisor.

    - Trump spends April spreading false claims about the Iran nuclear deal. It was an Obama accomplishment so he wants it undone.

    - At the beginning of May he addresses the NRA convention. (A speech noted for demented and wingnutty claims even by Trump standards.) Complete with tough talk about Iran.

    - A couple days later the NRA names Oliver North as NRA President. You know, the guy who supplied Iran with thousands of TOW anti-tank missiles and scores of HAWK anti-aircraft missiles. And who transferred the proceeds - tens of $millions - to terrorists in Central America.

    - A couple days later Trump announces that he's pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal. John Bolton waves his pom-poms.

    - A couple days later North appears on Fox News to tell Hannity that all Iranians are liars.

    AT&T's corruption is utterly irrelevant against this background. They could be directly subsidizing Playmates to sleep with Trump, with documents made public showing that they were directed to ask for political favors at strategic moments. It wouldn't matter. History won't even remember it.

  • On the post: As NAFTA Negotiations Finish Up, Hopefully The USTR Remembers That The Internet Has Been Good For Creators Too

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 11 May, 2018 @ 07:24am

    Re: Tech Bump and Trump Dump

    If you're going to declare it a "red state" vs. "blue state" issue, keep in mind that the US exports far more manufactured goods to Canada than it imports. A whole lot of farm produce is exported to both Canada and Mexico. Ending NAFTA would hurt the red states just as much as the blue ones.

    Tech - smartphones, PCs and whatnot - is almost all produced in Asia. Ending NAFTA would have no effect on it. Hollywood has gotten good at spreading production around to different countries. It likely won't be much affected either.

  • On the post: Rap or Pap? Dr. Dre Loses Trademark Battle With Dr. Drai, A Gynecologist

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 11 May, 2018 @ 12:53pm

    Dr. Drai, a Pennsylvania-based gynecologist filed in 2015 to trademark his name and “Doctor Drai OBGYN & Media Personality."

    A more fortunate choice than his name and "The Cocky Gynecologist."

  • On the post: Court: FBI Agents Can Be Held Accountable For Tossing Immigrants On The No-Fly List Because They Refused To Be Informants

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 11 May, 2018 @ 05:48am

    Re: Just wait for the angry old men

    You'll have to forgive me being rusty on chauvinism, it's been some time since I have been to the U.S.
    C'mon; be fair. It's inspiring to watch America wrestle with difficult philosophical questions like this one, in addition to "Should people have health care" and "Are Nazis bad."

  • On the post: Venture Beat Reporter Abuses DMCA To Silence A Critic

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 10 May, 2018 @ 02:56pm

    Re: Techdirt's schtick is to take one in millions and claim is the

    Tens of thousands in millions. Bogus takedowns are well documented as a VERY common thing.

    Your saving grace is that your dishonesty is consistently obvious.

  • On the post: Companies Respond To The GDPR By Blocking All EU Users

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 10 May, 2018 @ 12:37pm

    Re: Re: Re: GDPR

    It's interesting that even if you renounce your US citizenship, if you're US-born you'll always be a "US person" under FATCA.

    By that logic even though Ted Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship going into the 2016 election, he'll always be a "Canadian person."

  • On the post: The More Copyright Holders Move Up The Stack, The More They Put Everyone At Risk

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 10 May, 2018 @ 11:20am

    Re: Re:

    ...and you’ll have nothing to worry about!
    That's proven to be false, many times over.

  • On the post: Companies Respond To The GDPR By Blocking All EU Users

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 10 May, 2018 @ 10:39am

    Re:

    If you're a small business in the US doing no business in the EU, it doesn't apply to you. It's only relevant if you do business in the EU.

    This is similar to court rulings from the EU, Canada and the US: They apply to Google because while Google is Bermuda-based (according to its tax filings), it has offices and does business in those other countries.

  • On the post: Actors Hired To Play Consumers In Bid To Thwart Renewable Energy in New Orleans

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 10 May, 2018 @ 01:59pm

    Company Motto

    From the non-disclosure agreement:

    A few things to keep in mind:

    1) Tell nobody you're being paid.

    2) Tell nobody you're being paid.

    3) Media will be present, do not talk to them.

    4) Tell nobody you're being paid.

    5) If someone approaches you, don't tell them you are being paid.

    Wow. Michael Cohen is everywhere.

  • On the post: Cops 'Help' Naked, Possibly-Suicidal Schizophrenic Man By Tasing Him To Death

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 May, 2018 @ 03:24pm

    Re: Re: The double standard is deafening.

    That's one way to view it. That other is that when violent opposition becomes effective, the nonviolent guy can give you a graceful way out.

    There's a third major example of 20th century passive resistance. But it wasn't very effective during the Holocaust.

  • On the post: Cops 'Help' Naked, Possibly-Suicidal Schizophrenic Man By Tasing Him To Death

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 May, 2018 @ 02:21pm

    Re: Three cheers for dead cops

    No, it's not just the bad cops. It's the supposedly good cops around them that don't speak out, don't act, and do nothing to prevent it from happening again.

    If that seems unfair, just remember that the officers in this case - as in countless other cases - won't be charged. It's not just the DA's office that's cleared them of wrongdoing, declaring that torturing a man to death was not excessive. It's the police force that never charged them to begin with.

  • On the post: It Ain't Innovation if No One Wants To Buy What You're Selling

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 May, 2018 @ 01:12pm

    Re:

    Yeah, they have a history of partisan wingnuttery. My favorite was during the 2009 healthcare debate. Their editorial claim:

    People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.
    They later admitted that Hawking lived in the U.K. Hawking's response:
    I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS [National Health Service]. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived.
    What Gibson did was made illegal under a Bush II-era amendment to the Lacey Act. (Those opposed argued that the motivation for the act was to protect US lumber jobs. In other words, it would have passed under Trump too.) But as your article claims, competitors in China (making luxury bed, not guitars) aren't subject to US environmental law so it's all Obama's fault.

  • On the post: It Ain't Innovation if No One Wants To Buy What You're Selling

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 May, 2018 @ 12:47pm

    Re:

    For most people 5G merely means that you could burn through your monthly data cap in the first ten minutes of the month rather than the first hour. Or that a rogue app could do it for you, sending you into huge data overage charges.

  • On the post: Gaming Industry And Game Consumers On A Collision Course Over Loot Boxes

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 May, 2018 @ 03:41pm

    I recall a story where a game developer, thanks to newly installed games immediately pulling updates from his server, found that something like 98% of his game installs on the Android platform were pirated.

    And so for Android you needed in-game ads, purchases and other sources of revenue. That wasn't true so much for mobile platforms, but it was the next logical step regardless.

  • On the post: Comcast Prepares To Get Even Larger With Sky, Fox Acquisitions

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 May, 2018 @ 08:04am

    Re: Re:

    Controls the US, perhaps. But they're having the opposite effect in the rest of the world. If there's one thing Fox and Trump will be known for, it's eliminating US soft power.

  • On the post: AT&T Stumbles As It Tries To Explain Why It Paid $200K To Cohen's Shady Shell Company

    Roger Strong ( profile ), 09 May, 2018 @ 11:08am

    AT&T is a company with pretty greasy track record, whether we're talking about the time it turned a blind eye to drug dealers running a directory assistance scam on its own users, the time it was caught helping scammers rip off telecom systems for the hearing impaired, or that time it was caught making bills harder to understand just to help crammers rip off AT&T customers.

    Oddly, none of these were predicted in AT&T's You Will commercials.

Next >>