ShadowNinja 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (455) comment rss

  • On the post: Nintendo Gets Huge Settlement Against ROM Site Probably Just To Scare Other ROM Sites

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2018 @ 12:08pm

    Re: Re:

    And the platform is literally there for free already, with improvements over the old system, like pausing and save states.

    But we can't have that because there's no DRM to stop people from making copies of it!

    It would be like chefs refusing to sell cook books with their recipes because gasp people could grab a pen and paper and make illegal copies of the recipes without paying the chef!

  • On the post: Not Even Hiding It Any More: EU Council Explicitly Pushing For Mandatory Upload Filters

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2018 @ 11:35am

    Re: Step Two

    Meh, just shut down email entirely.

    Everything you write is covered by copyright, that includes emails. So thanks to overly broad copyright laws, emails are literally built to infringe on the sender's copyrights!

  • On the post: Not Even Hiding It Any More: EU Council Explicitly Pushing For Mandatory Upload Filters

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 16 Nov, 2018 @ 11:32am

    Re: Re:

    Like I said a while ago, I wonder how long it'll take till this causes an international incident if they make these upload filters world-wide.

    It would be too easy to censor political parties or candidates in non-EU countries by reporting all their youtube videos as infringing.

  • On the post: The Wonky Donkey: How Infringement Helped Create A Best Seller… Which Would Be Impossible Under Article 13

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 15 Nov, 2018 @ 01:24pm

    Re:

    Disney and other IP holders should learn the value of free advertising is what it comes down to.

    If I see ads Disney paid for I look away or turn my TV off. If I see an organic ad like this from a happy customer I'm more likely to listen and buy the product.

  • On the post: The Wonky Donkey: How Infringement Helped Create A Best Seller… Which Would Be Impossible Under Article 13

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 15 Nov, 2018 @ 01:20pm

    Re: "That video is almost certainly copyright infringement."

    Hey look everyone, it's another critic of Techdirt who clearly didn't read the article!

  • On the post: UCLA Flails Amid Pro-Palestine Group's Planned Conference, While L.A.'s City Council Goes Full Stupid

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 15 Nov, 2018 @ 10:20am

    Re: Re: Arabs Are Semites Too

    Judaism is a religion, not a race.
    That one always drives me crazy. If people want a different word for people of Jewish heritage only then think of a new word, don't use the same name as the religion. People change religions, treating someone's birth religion as their race is harmful and unfair to them, especially in many 2nd and 3rd world countries where there's actual legal complications to changing religions.

  • On the post: UCLA Flails Amid Pro-Palestine Group's Planned Conference, While L.A.'s City Council Goes Full Stupid

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 15 Nov, 2018 @ 09:07am

    Re:

    ... What?

    Some far right hate groups hate Israel and Jews yes. But among politicians the Far Right ones can't get enough of making themselves look like friends to Israel. Many Evangelicals (especially in the US) view siding with Israel as a way of protecting Christian holy land from the Muslims in the Middle East.

  • On the post: Judge Says Amazon Needs To Hand Over Recordings Created By Murder Victim's Echo Speaker

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 14 Nov, 2018 @ 12:00pm

    Re: Why challenge it?

    Well from Amazon's perspective this ruling could be interpreted by others that the police can get a warrant at any time to listen in on what their Alexa hears. And who knows who Amazon is selling access to everything Alexa hears?

    And then what about other government agencies accused of doing stuff without warrants, like the NSA? Would you want a listening device in your home that the government can also listen in to?

    And then having the reputation as the company who will just roll over and hand your data to the government could put them at a competitive disadvantage to companies like Apple. Apple has been publicly involved in court fights for encrypting their customer's data on their devices, and not putting in backdoors to crack it for the government.

    This very lawsuit proves that Alexa's data is NOT encrypted and Amazon can hand it over to anyone they want at any time.

  • On the post: Pennsylvania Attorney General Sends Broad, Unconstitutional Gag Order To Gab's New DNS Provider

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 13 Nov, 2018 @ 11:41am

    Re: You SKIPPED GoDaddy dropping Gab for no valid cause.

    Haven't read about this, but was GoDaddy being threatened by a government entity?

    Some businesses have dumped groups before over government pressure, like Wikileaks being dumped by Paypal back when Wikileaks first became famous. There was a bunch of government backlash against them at the time.

    Certain industries are effectively blacklisted from some services (like banking) because of government pressure and laws. Medical Marijuana businesses for example are not allowed to have bank accounts, because marijuana is still illegal under federal law, and it would make the banks guilty of laundering 'drug money' in the Federal government's eyes. While the banks may want to do business with them, they're blacklisted because of government action.

  • On the post: After Being Sued To Block Sci-Hub; Swedish ISP Blocks Court's And Elsevier's Website In Protest

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2018 @ 03:19pm

    Re: Alls fair in love and war

    This is unfortunately true. As much as you might hate changes you have to adapt to them.

    Take the SCOTUS decision that removed campaign spending limits. Democrats deeply despise it, but of course they're raising a bunch of money under the new rules. If they didn't they'd get blown away from being so badly outspent, and big money backers would win even more control over the government.

    As wrong and bad as censorship of the web is, if jerks want to force the web to be censored then they should get a taste of their own medicine.

  • On the post: New York Lawmakers Want Social Media History To Be Included In Gun Background Checks

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2018 @ 12:08pm

    Re: Wow, a twofer!

    Infringing on the 2nd Amendment rights of The People by infringing on their 1st Amendment rights.
    Not really. Contrary to public opinion due to multiple generations of political propaganda, the second amendment DOES NOT apply to individuals, it ONLY applies to militias. Don't believe me? Read the 2nd amendment:
    A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
    An individual American who isn't a part of a state militia is NOT a 'militia', and therefore is not protected under the 2nd amendment. Besides, the whole idea of banning gun ownership in the founding father's times would have been as absurd as the idea of the government banning automobiles today. If we were rewriting the constitution would anyone seriously suggest "We need a constitutional right to own automobiles?", and would anyone take it seriously enough to put in the constitution? People depended on guns for their livelihoods at the time of the Founding Fathers. Many had to hunt for food with guns out in the frontiers, and other areas lived under the very real threat of Native Americans attacking their homes. Oh and to those saying that the SCOTUS recognizes it as an individual right to own a gun, guess when they did that? It wasn't in the founding father's days, nope. It was in the 'ancient' days of 2008 after decades of propaganda by gun rights advocates on the subject. The SCOTUS gets stuff about the constitution wrong from time to time. Just look at Plessy v Ferguson which said Separate but Equal was perfectly constitutional despite the 14th amendment. The SCOTUS eventually recognized the 14th amendment exists and overturned that in Brown vs Board of Education.

  • On the post: After Being Sued To Block Sci-Hub; Swedish ISP Blocks Court's And Elsevier's Website In Protest

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2018 @ 10:49am

    Re: Re:

    FYI, it varies by state and such.

    Federal judges for example are nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate.

    State judges are sometimes nominated by the governor and confirmed by the legislature. Other times they're on the ballot. This goes for both state supreme court judges and lower state judges. It also goes for judges in other courts to.

  • On the post: Rockstar Ports Its Old, Antiquated, Flawed Censorial Blacklist For Player Chat Into New 'Red Dead Redemption' Game

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 07 Nov, 2018 @ 10:39am

    I've seen even stupider black listing.

    There's been twitch channels that blacklisted words like 'Kill' to stop people from threatening the lives of others in chat. But one problem there, a lot of games involve killing people or other bad guys. And in this case it was a MOBA gaming tournament, where Kills is one of the most important stats in the game. And where killing the enemy heroes is very important to win the game.

    So yeah, chat couldn't use the word 'kill' when talking about a game about killing people.

  • On the post: Voting Device Manufacturer Encourages Users To Use (And Re-Use) Easily-Guessed Passwords

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 06 Nov, 2018 @ 12:37pm

    Re: Well....

    Well it's also been beaten into our heads for 2 decades to follow bad password policies. Many of the official recommendations Tim posted encourage bad password hygiene that will make you more vulnerable to getting hacked.

    • Forcing a mix of upper/lower case letters, a number, and a symbol? Check.
    • Telling people 8 characters is good enough (even worse, they say 6 is allowed!)
    • Frequent password changes (yes if someone leaves who was working it this can be necessary, but otherwise no it's not)
    • No mention of avoiding commonly used passwords.
    This XKCD comic explains a lot of why these those recommendations are bad

  • On the post: Georgia Scrambles To Patch Massive Vulnerabilities In Its Voter Registration System After Insisting It Was Totally Secure

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 06 Nov, 2018 @ 08:32am

    Re: We will fix this promptly!

    You joke, but there's some states with rules nearly that bad. My dad didn't get to vote one year because he had a last minute trip scheduled to visit a client. It was after the deadline to get an absentee ballot, and it was a state with no early voting (even today it still has no early voting). Oh and the worst part of that state's rules? It's illegal to vote by absentee ballot if you'll be home that day and able to show up at the polls. You have to sign under penalty of perjury that you'll be out of the state on the election day in order to get an absentee ballot. (The state is Pennsylvania)

  • On the post: Court Dismisses Bogus Charges Brought Against Nevada Man Who Pissed Off Local Cops By Using The Crosswalk

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 06 Nov, 2018 @ 08:25am

    The really ironic part about this sting is how police officers in other states have given tickets to people for crossing the streets too slowly.

    One of the most infamous cases was a ticket to an elderly grandmother with a walker who couldn't go any faster. But there was one major problem with said intersection she was crossing, the crossing light was so short so that even some college athletes running at full speed couldn't get across in time.

  • On the post: Georgia's Brian Kemp And The No Good, Very Bad Claim That Democrats Were Hacking Voter Registration System

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 05 Nov, 2018 @ 01:05pm

    Re: Re:

    My point was that if someone hypothetically removed over 50% of the state from the voter rolls it would de-legitimize the entire process (especially if literally everyone under specific party designations were thrown off the rolls).

    Even if 'your guy' wins in that scenario, the massive fraud through disenfranchisement would mean that even the winner's own supporters wouldn't think the election was legitimate.

  • On the post: Supreme Court Rejects Telecom Industry Calls To Hear Net Neutrality Case… For Now

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 05 Nov, 2018 @ 01:08pm

    ... Wait, if Roberts owns stock in there, and Kavanaugh can't rule on something he ruled on at a lower court level... will the SCOTUS be short 1 or 2 justices whenever this is heard then?

    Roberts can sell the stock, but Kavanaugh can't unhear something he already heard?

  • On the post: Georgia's Brian Kemp And The No Good, Very Bad Claim That Democrats Were Hacking Voter Registration System

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 05 Nov, 2018 @ 11:54am

    From the reporting, it appears that the vulnerability is the kind of mistake that was common on the web two decades ago, that once you've logged in you can access anyone else's content just by changing the URL. Basically anyone with any degree of knowledge of online security learned to block such a vulnerability at least a decade or more ago. It is astounding that such a vulnerability might still exist online, let alone on something as vital and key to democracy as a state election system.

    Wow... that's literally the kind of story that Techdirt has written about companies getting prosecutors to go after people for reporting for CFAA violations.

    That kind of incompetence should be criminally illegal for how badly you're handling confidential data.

    Also now that this is in the public, there's literally nothing to stop someone from quickly writing a bot to modify the voter registration for literally everyone in Georgia. Including cancelling it.

    Or maybe because Kemp's security is so bad it's possible to just use SQL Injection to delete EVERY Georgian from the voter roll. Or worse yet, delete the entire roll of Georgia voters from one political party but not the other. No need to make a bot that way, it would literally be just a line or two of SQL queries. Can you imagine the chaos that would cause on election day? They'd pretty much have to cancel or redo the election.

  • On the post: Georgia Government Officials Celebrate Halloween By Engaging In Pointless Hassling Of Sex Offenders

    ShadowNinja ( profile ), 01 Nov, 2018 @ 07:44am

    Re: Re:

    Yeah, the sex offender list is essentially just a public shaming list that serves no point but to scare people.

    If sex offenders are really so dangerous to our communities that we need to keep them on lists, them maybe we should just give life sentences to them if they're really that heinous so that we don't have to worry about how dangerous our neighbors might be.

    Letting actually dangerous sex offenders free and putting a ton of restrictions on them & the non-dangerous people on the list that make it super difficult to live a normal live (such as bans on 'social media sites' which the SCOTUS struck down a few years ago for being too vague) doesn't help anyone.

Next >>