saulgoode 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (351)

• On the post: Bruce Schneier On The Feudal Internet And How To Fight It

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 25 Oct, 2013 @ 07:34pm

  A blast from the past...

  http://www.schneierfacts.com/

• On the post: New Study Highlights How Megaupload Took Down Over 10 Million Non-Infringing Files

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2013 @ 10:15pm

  Re: Re: betamax vs. grokster

  ...and Sony and JVC did what exactly?

  According to the court records, "Sony's advertising was silent on the subject of possible copyright infringement".
  
  I don't necessarily agree with the Supreme Court's finding of contributory infringement, but their ruling hinged on the conclusion that Grokster actively promoted itself as being a means for its users to engage in copyright infringement.
  
  This distinction between the two cases was directly addressed in the Supreme Court's ruling.

• On the post: New Study Highlights How Megaupload Took Down Over 10 Million Non-Infringing Files

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 22 Oct, 2013 @ 04:39pm

  Re: betamax vs. grokster

  A new standard was created under Napster and Grokster which explicitly denies the "substantial non-infringing uses" standard to BUSINESSES.

  That's not what those rulings found.
  
  When ruling on Napster, the Ninth Court of Appeals explicitly confirmed the original "Betamax" standard (i.e., that Napster was "capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses."). Napster lost because they had direct, explicit knowledge that infringement was taking place. They were asked to remove specific titles by Metallica, Dr Dre, and various other label-represented artists and they refused to take down the links.
  
  Similarly, in MGM vs Grokster the Supreme Court re-affirmed the validity of the Betamax finding, but ruled against Grokster because Grokster actually promoted infringing uses of their software.

• On the post: Copyright As Censorship Again: Game Developer Takes Down Scathing YouTube Review

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 21 Oct, 2013 @ 09:43am

  Re: "He doesn't just Streisand Effect Wild Games Studio..."

  All nouns can be verbed.

• On the post: FISA Court Rubber Stamps Continued Collection Of Metadata On Every Single Phone Call

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 12 Oct, 2013 @ 02:24am

  Re: Re: No actually !!

  Not just the spirit, but the letter of the Constitution is violated. The Constitution explicitly guarantees the States a republican form of government. Secret courts and secret laws do not a republic make.

• On the post: The DHS Has Been Using A Fake Mexican Constitution Article To Deport US Citizens For 35 Years

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2013 @ 06:05am

  Re:

  By "punished", I presume you mean placed in charge of the review panel investigating how the department can avoid such mishaps* in the future.
  
  
  
  * By "mishap", I mean having the public find out what they did, not what they did.

• On the post: James Clapper Says 'Peace Of Mind' Trumps Effectiveness In Evaluating NSA Surveillance

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 09 Oct, 2013 @ 10:15am

  There's another metric I would use; let's call it the "peace of mind metric".

  I agree with this 100% -- however I'd find much greater peace of mind if an agency of my government wasn't wasting billions of dollars subverting the efficacy of the greatest development of humankind ever and threatening the status of over 4 trillion dollars in annual global commerce (not to mention petty little things such as representative government and rights to privacy, free speech, and due process).

• On the post: Team Prenda Tries To Flip The Story Of John Steele's Mother-in-Law To Make Alan Cooper Look Bad

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 08 Oct, 2013 @ 05:05am

  Quoting John Perry Barlow out of context may seem like fun, but it really just makes you look confused and silly.

  Especially considering that the cited quotation was part of Mr Barlow's response to Congress' enactment of the "Computer Decency Act", which was quickly ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

• On the post: Once Again, If Copyright Enforcement Doesn't Improve The Bottom Line, What's The Point?

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 07 Oct, 2013 @ 10:12am

  "According to the RIAJ, since the introduction of the new legislation rentals have increased by 50%." -- Rentals are a legal method. (RIAJ make not care for that, but it is legal.)

  Yet in the U.S. such rental of music is illegal. Are these Japanese "renters" merely grifters stealing from musicians? Or is U.S. copyright law in need of reform so that renting music should be "a legal method"?
  
  Is one approach more moral than the other? Or are the copyright laws of these two countries enforcing arbitrary decisions as to who is deemed a criminal and who is an upstanding, law-abiding contributor to society?

• On the post: NSA Defenders Need To Learn: Trust Is Something You Earn, Not Legislate

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 01 Oct, 2013 @ 08:27am

  Re: Post from OOTB

  I threw out my magic Eight Ball because being right five percent of the time is not sufficient cause to pay attention to it.

• On the post: MPAA & RIAA Return To Blaming Google For Their Own Inability To Innovate

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2013 @ 09:40am

  Lost in submission:

  For me the lie in this statistic is that not all visits to "sites with infringing content" are for the purpose of accessing that content. By the MPAA's own numbers, 30% of The Pirate Bay's torrents point to non-infringing works; and TPB is the self-proclaimed poster child of online piracy. Visitors might also be interested in a particular movie's popularity (even Netflix does this), or in reading reviews, or engaging in academic research on internet usage.

• On the post: RIAA Whines To Congress That It Doesn't Like Google's Search Results

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2013 @ 10:27am

  Mr Sherman fails to point out that 80% of music file-sharing takes place offline.

• On the post: MPAA & RIAA Return To Blaming Google For Their Own Inability To Innovate

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 18 Sep, 2013 @ 09:31am

  "74% of consumers surveyed cited using a search engine as a discovery or navigation tool in their initial viewing sessions on sites with infringing content."

• On the post: The NSA Has No Solution For The Real 'Snowden Problem' And It's Only Going To Get Worse

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 17 Sep, 2013 @ 10:31am

  John Bolton, argued that Snowden ?thinks he?s smarter and has a higher morality than the rest of us ??

  
  And the last few months have justified that thinking.

• On the post: Edward Snowden Receives Whistleblowing Award

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 04 Sep, 2013 @ 08:28am

  Re: Re: Re: 'Because to be a whistleblowers means exposing illegal and/or unethical actions'

  Whether it's a threat to national security is a separate argument. An activity can mitigate a threat to national security and still that activity be "wrong".

• On the post: Edward Snowden Receives Whistleblowing Award

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 03 Sep, 2013 @ 11:26pm

  Re: 'Because to be a whistleblowers means exposing illegal and/or unethical actions'

  If the government did nothing wrong then there was no justification for hiding that they did it. Even those who support what the government did should recognize that hiding they did it was wrong.

• On the post: No, Snowden Didn't Have Any 'Other Avenues' To Blow The Whistle

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 29 Aug, 2013 @ 09:58am

  One wonders how many Edward Snowdens there've been over the past decade about whom we've never heard because they chose to report their concerns through the prescribed whistle-blower channels.

• On the post: Key Loophole Allows NSA To Avoid Telling Congress About Thousands Of Abuses

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 19 Aug, 2013 @ 09:08am

  2,776 violations less two-thirds still doesn't get us down to the zero violations reported to Congress.

• On the post: Senate Intelligence Committee Has Been Able To Challenge Classification Of Documents For Forty Years; It's Just Never Done It

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 15 Aug, 2013 @ 10:27am

  Re: Geez, will ya get over your shlock?

  What we need is to quit yapping and actually start resisting the surveillance society. -- Starting with Google and Facebook,...

  Erm, yeah. Already done that. I choose not to use Google's services. I choose not to use Facebook. Or MSN. Or Skype. I can, and do, opt out of all of these services, largely because I don't think the benefits offered overcome the invasion of my privacy.
  
  Thing is, I can't opt out of the government surveillance; the only choice is to attempt to get the government to change its decision that such surveillance is constitutional and/or beneficial.

• On the post: Loophole Shows That, Yes, NSA Has 'Authority' To Spy On Americans — Directly In Contrast With Public Statements

  

  saulgoode ( profile ), 09 Aug, 2013 @ 11:10am

  Wrong loophole

  I don't buy that collecting all the data on U.S. cititzens is consistent with the Constitution, regardless whatever oversights or limitations may be in place concerning the querying of the resultant database.

Next >>