Rob McMillin 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (28) comment rss

  • On the post: As Recording Industry Announces Massive Growth, Why Do We Need Article 13 Again?

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 19 Mar, 2019 @ 06:21am

    “Rabid” growth?

    What’s “rabid” growth? Is it foamy?

  • On the post: North Carolina Passes An Entirely Misguided Restore Campus Free Speech Act

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 10 Aug, 2017 @ 06:58am

    A bizarre piece from Techdirt

    It's kind of amazing to read Techdirt write a piece claiming that campus free speech issues are a non-issue. Is the author even remotely aware of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education's database of campus speech suppression (https://www.thefire.org/category/cases/free-speech/")? This piece contains a number of uninformed hand-waves.

  • On the post: German Competition Authority Decides To Take No Action Over Google's Removal Of Snippets From Google News

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 24 Sep, 2015 @ 03:58am

    Re: Now for the fun

    The sense I get of this is that the Bundeskartellamt was looking to set a statutory rate for "ancillary copyright" use along the same lines as music use in other contexts. Good that they failed.

  • On the post: House Votes For USA Freedom Act By Overwhelming Margin; Now Up To The Senate

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 14 May, 2015 @ 11:41am

    Re: Re: Justin Amash disagrees, and it's important

    Thanks for that. However, the fact that this piece characterizes the bill as a positive step is deeply discouraging.

  • On the post: House Votes For USA Freedom Act By Overwhelming Margin; Now Up To The Senate

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 14 May, 2015 @ 07:51am

    Justin Amash disagrees, and it's important

    Usually Techdirt is on top of these matters, but Justin Amash's at-length response to the news that the USAFA passed the House is worth reading in its entirety:


    Today, I will vote no on ‪#‎HR3361‬, the ‪#‎USAFREEDOMAct‬.

    I am an original cosponsor of the Freedom Act, and I was involved in its drafting. At its best, the Freedom Act would have reined in the government's unconstitutional domestic spying programs, ended the indiscriminate collection of Americans' private records, and made the secret FISA court function more like a real court—with real arguments and real adversaries.

    I was and am proud of the work our group, led by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, did to promote this legislation, as originally drafted.

    However, the revised bill that makes its way to the House floor this morning doesn't look much like the Freedom Act.

    This morning's bill maintains and codifies a large-scale, unconstitutional domestic spying program. It claims to end "bulk collection" of Americans' data only in a very technical sense: The bill prohibits the government from, for example, ordering a telephone company to turn over all its call records every day.

    But the bill was so weakened in behind-the-scenes negotiations over the last week that the government still can order—without probable cause—a telephone company to turn over all call records for "area code 616" or for "phone calls made east of the Mississippi." The bill green-lights the government's massive data collection activities that sweep up Americans' records in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

    The bill does include a few modest improvements to current law. The secret FISA court that approves government surveillance must publish its most significant opinions so that Americans can have some idea of what surveillance the government is doing. The bill authorizes (but does not require) the FISA court to appoint lawyers to argue for Americans' privacy rights, whereas the court now only hears from one side before ruling.

    But while the original version of the Freedom Act allowed Sec. 215 of the Patriot Act to expire in June 2015, this morning's bill extends the life of that controversial section for more than two years, through 2017.

    I thank Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte for pursuing surveillance reform. I respect Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner and Rep. John Conyers for their work on this issue.

    It's shameful that the president of the United States, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the leaders of the country's surveillance agencies refuse to accept consensus reforms that will keep our country safe while upholding the Constitution. And it mocks our system of government that they worked to gut key provisions of the Freedom Act behind closed doors.

    The American people demand that the Constitution be respected, that our rights and liberties be secured, and that the government stay out of our private lives. Fortunately, there is a growing group of representatives on both sides of the aisle who get it. In the 10 months since I proposed the Amash Amendment to end mass surveillance, we've made big gains.

    We will succeed.

  • On the post: Film Academy Sues Family Of Oscar Winner For Selling Trophy On Ebay

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2014 @ 09:08pm

    AMPAS legal terms

    I understand that the Academy includes in its terms and conditions as part of the award a clause that gives them right of first refusal of any sale. That they are suing is a consequence of a contractual matter, and not mere litigiousness. (I believe this is not in effect for very old Oscars, before 1935 or so.)

  • On the post: Woman Faces Criminal Wiretapping Charges For Deploying Spyware On Her Husband's Phone

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 23 Oct, 2014 @ 04:13pm

    SF Chronicle

    Has the Chronicle completely spun off the SFGate.com web arm?

  • On the post: Neil deGrasse Tyson Attacks 'Startup Culture,' Demonstrates Lack Of Understanding About Innovation

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2014 @ 09:40am

    Good lord, yes, THIS. There is the germ of a good argument in his beef -- we need some good advances in energy, like, yesterday -- but his complaint is the complaint of the central planner, of the man who sees others engaged in pursuits in which he does not approve and declares them wasteful, without any further analysis (or input from others). In that, he rides exactly the same moral plane as the religious scold decrying homosexuality, or the Bloombergian anti-large-soda crusader.

  • On the post: Leaked TPP IP Chapter Would Lead To Much Greater Online Surveillance… Because Hollywood Still Hates The Internet

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 16 Oct, 2014 @ 12:33pm

    IP "Biz" and government have common interests here

    Years ago, before the DMCA, I observed that the real danger was a conjoining of private interests dependent on copyright (the **AA), and the government. The former wants a broad police power on the Internet for commercial reasons, the latter for political reasons. It is all too easy to see, for example, a system whereby you must register reading materials with some central repository -- which will allow revocation at any time. Such a system would be invaluable for the suppression of leaks.

    That is what is being proposed here.

  • On the post: Awesome Stuff: One Last Chance To Join With Thousands Of Others To Help Limit The Influence Of Money In Politics

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 05 Jul, 2014 @ 02:26pm

    Re: Re: Re: Re: Techdirt is on the wrong side of this

    Once more, with feeling: Citizens United was correctly decided. People complaining that it was not miss two very important points, at least:

    1) The Constitution says nothing about the nature of the speaker; it suppresses Congressional action. The First Amendment doesn't care whether the speaker is a Martian or a Montanan, or acts through a corporation to do so. Indeed, you are using multiple corporations to engage in speech here; complaining that speech via corporations needs to be regulated is to invite that same regulation upon yourself.

    2) If Citizens United was wrongly decided, then so was New York Times vs. Sullivan, a point made eloquently by Floyd Abrams, who represented the Times in that case.

    Pretending that Congress has not only a right but a responsibility to suppress speech (as Bernie Sanders most perniciously has) is a vile perversion of what the First Amendment stands for.

  • On the post: Awesome Stuff: One Last Chance To Join With Thousands Of Others To Help Limit The Influence Of Money In Politics

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 04 Jul, 2014 @ 04:25pm

    Re: Re: Techdirt is on the wrong side of this

    Lessig doesn't literally have to say "speech isn't money"; I use that locution mainly because it was used by opponents of Citizens United who refused to understand that the First Amendment makes no distinction among speakers. What does money buy in political campaigns but airtime and advertising? And if you complain about the power of money in elections, isn't that, in the end, the thing you would complain about -- other people using money to advance political speech for the candidates of their choice?

  • On the post: Awesome Stuff: One Last Chance To Join With Thousands Of Others To Help Limit The Influence Of Money In Politics

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 04 Jul, 2014 @ 12:38pm

    Techdirt is on the wrong side of this

    Larry Lessig is a smart man, but he -- and Techdirt -- are on the wrong side of this. This is really a hidden call to suppress speech of people who wish to spend money on political campaigns. The "speech isn't money" canard is old and tired and false.

    The real answer to limit the reach of money in government is to limit what powers government has. We do not generally see people spending millions of dollars for a school board seat. But limiting state power, of course, is a political non-starter.

  • On the post: Lessig's Anti-SuperPAC SuperPAC Raises First $1 Million In Just 12 Days

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 16 May, 2014 @ 08:26pm

    Beyond naive

    Lessig proposes a Constitutional Convention that would almost certainly, given the current political climate, put an end to the First Amendment. Because the First basically puts a blanket proscription on Congressional interference with free speech, but the left is utterly opposed to free speech, at least, from people of whom they do not approve (cough people who have organized themselves in corporations for tax purposes cough).

    This is a terrible idea, and in complete opposition to everything TechDirt claims to favor.

  • On the post: Driver Finds Himself Surrounded By Cops With Guns Out After Automatic License Plate Reader Misreads His Plate

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2014 @ 08:13am

    Re: Re: Will, not may.

    Yes, and this guy was -- I assume -- white and driving an upscale car. Imagine if, coincidentally, the vehicle turned out to be the same make and the driver were black.

  • On the post: Driver Finds Himself Surrounded By Cops With Guns Out After Automatic License Plate Reader Misreads His Plate

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 29 Apr, 2014 @ 08:12am

    What a dumb opinion

    ?I?m armchair quarterbacking the police, which is not a good position to be in,? Molner told the Post.


    Really? Isn't this the express abdication of citizen oversight? Of course we should be reviewing police response. It's part of living in a participatory government.

  • On the post: What's Feinstein So Upset About? CIA Just Spied On Senate Intelligence Committee 'Metadata'

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 11 Mar, 2014 @ 01:11pm

    Re: Repercussions for DiFi?

    Really? You think Emperor Alexander would let her take action against the NSA?

  • On the post: CIA Accused Of Spying On Senate Intelligence Committee Staffers

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 05 Mar, 2014 @ 04:57am

    DiFi's Fraudulent "Oversight"

    It really makes me wonder what the Spook-Industrial Complex has on DiFi. Or are they doing her so many favors that she no longer can say "no"?

  • On the post: Krugman Gets Informed, Changes His Tune On TPP

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 04 Mar, 2014 @ 06:31am

    Re: Re:

    Krugman long ago gave up any pretense to empiricism. He spends his days shilling for Keynesianist meddling, and the Democratic Party, and wears his Nobel as an all-purpose shield against criticism. He is worse than useless, he is actively destructive.

  • On the post: The Corruption Of Power: President Obama Trusts Himself Not To Abuse NSA Info

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 16 Jan, 2014 @ 04:21pm

    You all assume that he had some room to change things

    Given the amount of power E̶m̶p̶e̶r̶o̶r̶ er, General Alexander has, how much room did President Obama really have to change things once in office?

  • On the post: NSA Admits: Okay, Okay, There Have Been A Bunch Of Intentional Abuses, Including Spying On Love Interests

    Rob McMillin ( profile ), 23 Aug, 2013 @ 10:10pm

    Re: Had to tweet this at her...

    DiFi is either a tool or an idiot. Neither reflects well on her.

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