roxanneadams 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: Frugalista! Frugalista! Frugalista! Now… Where's My Cease And Desist?

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 23 Sep, 2009 @ 07:45pm

    Re: Re:

    I am not wed to the word "frugalista," but I AM wed to my rights of expression. Not to be melodramatic, but if it's OK for someone to own that word, what other words will be taken away from me/us

    I'd say take whatever legal help - and financial help - that you're offered. Issues like this - that seem kind of dumb at first - are actually very important, for the exact reasons that you suggest.

  • On the post: Eminem's Misguided Lawsuit Against Apple Over iTunes Set To Start

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 23 Sep, 2009 @ 01:42pm

    Re: Should be a fun court record....

    Counsel for the plaintiff: Bitch please, you must have a mental disease, assume the position and get back down on your knees.

    Judge: Okay, I'm going to need a 15 minute recess, a chainsaw, and fifteen minutes alone in my chambers with plaintiff and his counsel.

    Classic. Seriously classic.

  • On the post: Frugalista! Frugalista! Frugalista! Now… Where's My Cease And Desist?

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 23 Sep, 2009 @ 11:32am

    Those shiftless Frugalistas

    Illegal alien Frugalistas

    Lazy Frugalistas

    Damned foreign Frugalistas

    Ex-con Frugalistas

    Meagan's Law Frugalistas

    Long-haired hippie pot smoking Frugalistas

    Wife-swapping, pill-popping Frugalistas

    Commie-loving Frugalistas

    Fugitive Frugalistas


    Hey this is fun.

  • On the post: Frugalista! Frugalista! Frugalista! Now… Where's My Cease And Desist?

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 23 Sep, 2009 @ 10:54am

    This letter serves as formal notice that your use of the Mark in the blog xx Frugalista is confusingly similar and exactly the same to our client's Mark and unfairly capitalizes on the goodwill and reputation embodied in our client's use of the Mark. The Mark is a strong brand associated with our client's professional reputation and livelihood in the field of online journalism and has garnered local, national and international recognition. Your continued unauthorized use of the Mark is likely to confuse and mislead the consuming public and suggests an affiliation with our client's business and dealings with the public.

    Dumb Frugalista bitch.

  • On the post: Frugalista! Frugalista! Frugalista! Now… Where's My Cease And Desist?

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 23 Sep, 2009 @ 10:43am

    I am a Frugalista Bitch. I am THE Frugalista Bitch. Come up and see my Frugalista Files, cowboy. Is that your Frugalista Blog, or are you just happy to see me?

  • On the post: Cable Lobbyists Side With MPAA On Getting Permission To Break Your TV

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2009 @ 03:19pm

    Keep up the good fight against the paying consumer of your products.

  • On the post: Musicians Are Never Just About The Music

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2009 @ 12:19pm

    Singer/songwriter Janis Ian is a master of marketing and reaching out to her fans. She was one of the first musicians to hook up online with her fans, and she also wrote a widely-circulated (and highly criticized) email article years ago about free beer, as in why online music should be free. Ian makes a living touring, although at the end of one concert, I saw her loading her audio equipment into a cargo van - she is her own roadie, and this is a woman in her mid-fifties. You can't help but insanely love an artist who lives this way.

  • On the post: ASCAP, BMI Demanding Payment For 30 Second Previews At Web Stores

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2009 @ 01:40pm

    Re:

    I didn't see any foolish comments. ASCAP, BMI, independent music royalty societies, the RIAA and their partners in crime over at the MPAA have all worked hard to create an ugly experience for the end-user of the product, the music and movie consumer. Most of us - the end-user, the paying consumer, know that the artists have little say in these matters. They are simply the visible face of a dying music industry that is solely responsible for its own slow and painful death.


    Classic and much-loved TV shows aren't available on DVD because of the greed of ASCAP, BMI and the record labels, who want to squeeze every last penny out of every second of music played in the background. Some of this music can't be edited out. It's part of what made those shows unique and meaningful, so the rights-holders to the TV shows are giving up and walking away after protracted and expensive legal battles with the trifecta of music-industry bimbos whose greed is holding an entire industry hostage, keeping back innovation and killing new streams of revenue. They don't just want a share of the pie - the bimbos want it all, killing the profit margins for everyone involved in bringing these projects to DVD.

  • On the post: ASCAP, BMI Demanding Payment For 30 Second Previews At Web Stores

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2009 @ 12:15pm

    I use the 30 second feature all the time on Amazon and Itunes. Take it away and you, my dear friend Rick Carnes, can go pound sand. I'm the one of those dumb schmucks still paying for the music that I download, and actions like this make pirate music more attractive than ever.

    "Yesterday, I received a check for 2 cents. I'm not kidding. People think we're making a fortune off the Web, but it's a tiny amount. We need multiple revenue streams or this isn't going to work."

    For the last ten years I have made it a point never to buy a brand-new music CD, because of jerks like you who claim that you are speaking on behalf of the entire music industry. Used music CD = no royalties for you.

    I buy MP3s from Amazon and Itunes because the price is reasonable for me as a consumer. Specifically, the ability to hear that 30-second snippet means that I don't have to waste money on a song that sucks rotten eggs. Take that listening privilege away and I won't buy one 99 cent MP3 until I've had a chance to first download a pirated copy and listen to it. You and your friends at the MPAA and the RIAA are losing the war by alienating the dwindling ranks of paying customers.

  • On the post: Elderly Classic Rock Musicians Don't Like Music Video Games

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 14 Sep, 2009 @ 09:44am

    I wish I could remember what rock musician this quote was attributed to - for some reason, I think it was Robert Plant. In the 70's, a band trashed a hotel room, created an absolute menace, kept other guests up all night with their racket, even threw furniture off the balcony and into the pool. In the 90's, some of these same musicians were touring again, and they stayed in the same hotel, only this time, one noted, the only thing you could hear was one musician telling everyone else to be quiet, because his kids were trying to sleep.

  • On the post: A Look At The RIAA's Copyright Propaganda For Schools

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 11 Sep, 2009 @ 12:45pm

    I highly recommend reading at least the MusicRules Teacher's Guide. This is serious and disturbing propaganda. "Write the word songlifting on the chalkboard
    and ask students what they think it
    means. Have them read the definition of
    “songlifters” on the worksheet, then expand on
    this definition by having students share their
    own ideas, opinions, and experiences. Explain
    that in this activity they will be using spreadsheet
    software to investigate songlifting and find out how big a problem it really is."


    This is why I will never send my children to a public school, and if the private school that I'm paying good money for even dares to try and sneak this RIAA-produced garbage into the curriculum, I'll take my children out of the school.

    I do believe that downloading music without paying for it is stealing, but that's a very specific set of circumstances. How is borrowing a CD from a friend, ripping it to my IPOD and then giving back the CD a crime? The CD was paid for. The only legitimate argument I think the RIAA has is when that same music is uploaded to the internet and shared with the world. That creates an ethical situation in which the musicians are being cheated out of royalties.

    However, this may be only a matter of splitting hairs. Some legal purists might insist that borrowing my neighbor's Miley Cyrus CD and ripping it to my kids' IPOD is a violation of copyright laws as much as if we'd downloaded that same music from Limewire. What about the music CDs that I check out from the library and rip to my IPOD before returning them to the library? My moral code says those CDs were paid for, and I do not consider this to be stealing. I'm sure that the RIAA would disagree, and I do not want them brainwashing my children into believing that all borrowing of digital content is stealing.

    Someone pointed out that our neighborhood habit of passing around Blockbuster DVD rentals is technically a violation of copyright laws. One family rents the DVD on Friday and before the DVD is returned, at least five different households have borrowed and watched that DVD.

  • On the post: Google Working On Micropayment Scheme To Help Newspapers Commit Suicide Faster

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 10 Sep, 2009 @ 03:08pm

    Like chronic smokers, the print newspapers are responsible for their own slow, agonizing and painful death. If Google wants to play the game and pretend to be extending life-support to a dying patient, I say go ahead, but the disease is terminal and there is no cure.

    My parents keep complaining about how the LA Times keeps shrinking. As soon as their current year's subscription is up, they won't renew, after 50+ years of being home delivery customers. There's no value left in the paper for them.

    The Los Angeles Daily News put the bullet into their own brain after they cut off my service and turned me over to collections when I had a credit balance on my account. I had paid my bill twelve months in advance for years and never before had a problem. After they cut off my service, I started getting nastygrams in the mail and annoying phone calls at work. How do you convince a moron that $-100.00 means you have a credit balance?

    The person in charge of the delivery route showed up at my house at least once a week, slipping pay envelopes and statements through the mail slot on my front door, even one time, leaving a generic holiday card with a handwritten note inside, reminding me that in order to pay his workers and his bills, he needed me to pay my bills.

    Finally, I got the bright idea to call up and officially cancel my subscription. A week later, a refund check came in the mail. Sure, I'll subscribe to a print newspaper again - when hell freezes over.

  • On the post: Ohio State Senator Interested In Using 'Sex Offender Radar' To Alert People If Sex Offenders Are Nearby

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2007 @ 08:03pm

    Re:

    I agree with you completely. As a feminist, it makes me sick when the female teacher/male student cases are laughed off, as in 'Wow, I wish my English teacher had f--ed me when I was fourteen!' Yet as a society we demand full punishment for any male teacher/female student sexual cases. I think it's hypocritical.

    I was also in support of Meagans Law, but now believe that it is far too stringent and casts a wide net, never allowing the offender to get on with their lives. If he raped a kid, then we should keep the bastard in prison for life, but on these wobbler cases, streaking, being a stupid teenager and mooning someone, all are behavior that can result in a lifetime requirement to register as a sex offender.

  • On the post: The Most Boring PR People In The World

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 06 Dec, 2007 @ 07:46pm

    PR Firms are a joke

    There used to be a funny woman with a local talk show in Los Angeles. She took the time to read (and name) some of the PR folks who bombarded her with email, snail mail and other kinds of junk.

    It was obvious that none of the PR folks knew anything about her radio show, which consisted of three hours of playing bad music, recordings of prank phone calls done by other hosts on other shows, and once cooking a Furby, live online, during the first holiday season when everybody had to have one for their kids. (The Furby massacre involved a mallet and a boiling cauldron of water, if I recall correctly.)

    The PR pitches this woman received were hilarious, for everything from the newest diet book to some social cause a wingnut activist thought was important. The PR firms must send out mass mailings to every radio host in the country, without a clue as to what kind of content the show might actually be looking for. The only thing this woman, God bless her heart, would do was make fun of you and your stupid product. I used to call her show the Seinfeld of the radio. There was no point to it at all, but it was damned funny. Kind of like this message.

  • On the post: Bribing Users to Watch Ads Didn't Work In 1999 And It Doesn't Work Now

    roxanneadams ( profile ), 26 Nov, 2007 @ 11:04pm

    Gmail's targeted advertising works

    I use my Gmail account as the place to send all the crap I don't want clogging up my corporate e-mail account. If I sign up for a contest, etc., the retailer gets my Gmail email address.

    Google's targeted advertising program at the top of the Gmail page actually works. I haven't spent any money, but I've willingly signed up to be on email lists and given my name and address to some companies so they can mail me coupons for the products I want to buy. Today, God only knows why, the Gmail gods divined that I might be interested in a vegetarian lifestyle 'starter kit.' Turns out that I am actually interested and I willingly handed over my personal contact information to PETA, even though normally I think they're a bunch of lunatic tree-hugging wackos.