Roger Strong 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (3460)

• On the post: Former University Official Files Libel Lawsuit Against His Replacement For Things A Journalist Said

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 22 Jun, 2017 @ 10:28am

  Re: Re:

  Perhaps his lawyer advised him that it was a good idea. And perhaps his lawyer gets paid regardless, win or lose.

• On the post: How The Supreme Court's Recent Free Speech Ruling May Destroy Hollywood's Plans To Kick People Off The Internet

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 22 Jun, 2017 @ 10:02am

  Re: Re: Re: You're again slyly asserting that legal fictions allowed to exist for profit in public marketplace have superior right to "natural persons",

  nine mysterious figures in black robes

  The Nazgûl...? Oh those gosh-darned Ringwraiths, thwarting Anonymous Coward at every turn.

• On the post: Colorado Voters Will Get A Chance To Prevent Preteens From Using Smartphones

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 22 Jun, 2017 @ 09:47am

  Re:

  I'm missing a few fingertips because when I was 12 I was mixing my own black powder explosives.
  
  Video games and smartphones have since been demonized as dangerous to kids. Never that THAT coming.

• On the post: Colorado Voters Will Get A Chance To Prevent Preteens From Using Smartphones

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 22 Jun, 2017 @ 09:38am

  Re: Re:

  After her 11-year-old son was suspended for twice bringing a loaded handgun to school, Linnea C. Holdren, 43, said the matter was pretty much beyond her control. "I can't lock up his guns," she told police. "They belong to him, and he has a right to use them whenever he wants to use them." (The boy was expelled in January, and Holdren, who is a teacher at her son's Shickshinny, Pa., elementary school, has been charged with felony endangerment.)

  • San Jose Mercury News-AP, 12-18-05; WYOU-TV (Scranton), 1-18-06, via News of the Weird

  At least it wasn't a smartphone.

• On the post: How The Supreme Court's Recent Free Speech Ruling May Destroy Hollywood's Plans To Kick People Off The Internet

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2017 @ 03:23pm

  Re:

  It seems some Constitutional Amendments are more "equal" than others in the eyes of the Supreme Court.

  This seems reasonable in that if you think your 2nd amendment rights were unjustifiably taken away, you should absolutely be able to use your 1st amendment rights to protest. But if you think your 1st amendment rights were taken away, you should NOT be able to use your 2nd amendment rights to protest. That's subject to JFK's warning: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Should this warning not be heeded, constitutional amendments DO become equal... in their irrelevance.

• On the post: How The Supreme Court's Recent Free Speech Ruling May Destroy Hollywood's Plans To Kick People Off The Internet

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2017 @ 02:12pm

  Re: Re: Justice Ginsburg

  So, not even old enough to be off copyright.

• On the post: How The Supreme Court's Recent Free Speech Ruling May Destroy Hollywood's Plans To Kick People Off The Internet

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2017 @ 11:35am

  Re:

  The copyright trolls justify demands for disconnection by labelling the accused REPEAT offenders.
  
  But "repeat" just means that some senior citizen who has never heard of the show they're accused of downloading let alone BitTorrent... received a whole bunch of infringement claims in one night.

• On the post: Secret Defense Dept. Report Shows Manning Leaks Did No Serious Damage

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 21 Jun, 2017 @ 07:46am

  Re:

  Reminder: This story is dealing with at least three different sets of leaks.
  
  - Manning's leak of military documents, including the "Collateral Murder" video.
  
  - Manning's leak of State Department cables. Which, given that three million government workers and soldiers had access - and in some cases foreign government officials - with no tracking of their access and distribution - were marked "secret" only ironically.
  
  - "A different set of documents that was published the same year." The ones you refer to, which if I understand correctly, was leaked by someone else.

• On the post: Supreme Court Says You Can't Ban People From The Internet, No Matter What They've Done

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2017 @ 08:16pm

  Re:

  If someone demonstrates the ability to hack into a nuclear plant from the internet, then maybe - just maybe - it's the nuclear plant that should banned from the internet.

• On the post: Supreme Court Reminds US Government That Hate Speech Is, In Fact, Free Speech

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2017 @ 01:45pm

  Re: Re: Re:

  Yup. Even crazier, as the first link notes:

  In some states these laws also establish different standards of proof than are used in traditional American libel lawsuits, including the practice of placing the burden of proof on the party being sued.

• On the post: Supreme Court Says You Can't Ban People From The Internet, No Matter What They've Done

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2017 @ 12:51pm

  Re: Lower Courts

  There's a much stronger connection between their judges and voters who want their personal definition of "freedom" enforced.

• On the post: SLAPP Threats And The Grenfell Fire: Why We Must Stop Attacks On Free Speech

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2017 @ 11:28am

  Re:

  Way to leave a legacy, Senior Solicitor Vimal Sarna.

• On the post: Supreme Court Says You Can't Ban People From The Internet, No Matter What They've Done

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2017 @ 12:12pm

  Now Trump's handlers will never be able to take away his Twitter account.

• On the post: Broadband ISP CenturyLink Accused Of Wells-Fargo-Esque Scam That Bilked Millions From Customers

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 20 Jun, 2017 @ 07:38am

  Wells-Fargo-Esque

  Wells-Fargo. The Godwin's Law trigger for a new generation.

• On the post: Supreme Court Reminds US Government That Hate Speech Is, In Fact, Free Speech

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2017 @ 02:02pm

  Re:

  Well. With some Made in the USA exceptions. Food libel laws for example. Elsewhere you might get sued for disparaging a specific brand, like McDonalds. In the USA you can be sued for disparaging beef. No brand, no corporation mentioned, just beef. Or for disparaging meat by-products allowed in the USA but banned for human consumption in Canada and the European Union and elsewhere.

• On the post: There Is No 'Going Dark' Problem

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2017 @ 10:21am

  Re:

  Is there such a thing as Godwin's Law addiction?

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2017 @ 07:42am

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:

  That's a cop-out. "But your side is just as bad as ours!"

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2017 @ 06:24am

  Re: Re: Re:

  Careful there. Yes, "neoliberalism" is a real term describing Thatcher/Reagan type policies. But in America it means "Ok, it was Republican policy, but it's really the liberals' fault."

• On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 19 Jun, 2017 @ 01:31am

  Re: Re: Re:

  Netflix and other bandwidth hogs are not an argument against net neutrality. Throttling is not incompatible with net neutrality so long as you throttle ALL bandwidth hogs equally, whether it's Netflix or the ISP's own partner streaming service.
  
  You can still offer higher speed service for a higher price, which most ISPs do.

• On the post: Russia Stumbles Forth In Quest To Ban VPNs, Private Messenger Apps

  

  Roger Strong ( profile ), 16 Jun, 2017 @ 02:34pm

  Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hello Steganography

  For a satellite system to be viable it needs a sufficiently large user base, or much much cheaper launches.

  Or both. But that user base exists: Rural areas, ships etc. Also serving reporters and dissidents in totalitarian states is just icing on the cake.

  File servers in orbit could replace the pirate bay.

  Only if Pirate Bay themselves operated them. That's not happening any time soon. Even with cheap launches, you still need more money than Pirate Bay's business model would support.

  The limitations of satellites are why the telecommunications Industry went for the more expensive to install and maintain undersea cable systems to link continents.

  Sure. Sat phones are an expensive niche market compared to land lines. But it's a niche market that's shown to exist. Again, with rural areas, mines ships and whatnot paying for it, the current generation price is already low enough for reporters. The next generation will be cheaper and have MUCH higher data rates.

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